The New zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. THURSDAY, FEBUARY 2, 1899. A CRYING SHAME.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVII, Issue 5, 2 February 1899, Page 17

The New zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. THURSDAY, FEBUARY 2, 1899. A CRYING SHAME.

(WtSp T. PATRICK'S day is approaching. It is no x§|gv novelty to be reminded of that. Throughout JggjgV the Colony preparations are, or shortly will be, JKfegg' in full progress for the celebration of the great j§g\%fcf festival day of a people whose long and cne quered story is one of the most romantic <fcQ£ that nas ev er been penned by the muse of i history. The achievements, struggles, trials, traditions, and hopes of the Irish race and nation are mirrored in this day of days. It recalls a thousand bright and sad associations : memories of the glorious days of old when the ' Island of Saints and Scholars ' gave the faith to Scotland and the greater part of England, and when the footsteps of her missionaries left their traces over Continental Europe from Iceland to the Gulf of Taranto ; of the long centuries of valiant battle for faith and freedom ; of poetry, song, legend, and pathos unutterable; and of the later destinies of the sea-divided Gael, who have gone out from their ' own loved island of sorrow ' to help in the great work of empire and nation building, and to spread the faith of St. Patrick in every division of the habitable globe. The day is thronged with the memory of association and incident. It is rich in lessons, buoyant in hopes for the future. It is' well that the associations of the* day are brought to the people's minds from pulpit and altar. Why the reminder is so rigidly limited to the four walls of the church, we do not profess to knuw. Of the secular, as of the religious side of the Irish people's history, there is an abounding ignorance abroad. In both there is much for thankfulness and pride. In either there is as little for reproach as usually falls to the share of a race whose history travels so far up the course of ages.

There is, in all truth, enough to celebrate. The day begins well. But does the evening keep the promise of the morning '< We judge by the reports that ha\e appeared in the N.Z. Tablet for the past few years. In some placesall too rare and lar between— the secular celebration is, in its degree, true to the spirit of the day and the occasion. In a vastly greater number of instances the festive or social gathering at the day's close is marred by the introduction of an element that is a reflection on the taste of the committees, of the performers that are directly implicated, and of the Catholic public who sit and listen with complacency. We refer to the jabbering idiot uho is commonly known as the stage Irishman. By a large number of the compilers of our St. Patrkk's Day programmes he is apparently looked upon as the ILvMLt/r of the piece— as natural and necessary to such an occasion as a bridegroom to a wedding. And so his harsh voice and stupid antics run like the° trail of a serpent through a majority of our celebrations— cursing a sacred anniversary in a people's history with his coarse buifoonery, giving a lie another year's lease of life, embalming a prejudice, representing the typical son of Erin as a half-apish composite, made up of about equal parts of fool clown, and knave. '

In these colonies the annual caricature of the Irish character is usually acted on the stage by persons who have never been on Irish soil, or had opportunities of judging of the songs or manners of Ireland at first hand. We 'readily grantthat the motive idea is merely to raise a laugh, and that conscious race prejudice is not entertained nor wilful injustice intended. But, as Tkxnyson says, 'Evil is wrought by want of thought as well as want of heart.' The stock of low songs, recitations, and plays that are represented as ' Irish ' create and perpetuate a prejudice. The net result of the iihpression left by these annual displays of whooping vulgarity js to make the name of Ireland, the songs of Ireland, the literature of Ireland, the manners of Ireland, as

degrading as it is possible to make them in the minds of those who have had no opportunity of judging of them beyond the knowledge acquired through books, or through the medium of the at least nominally national celebrations which bring each succeeding St. Patrick's Day to a close. The Irish character is a many-sided one. The race is blessed with a sense of genuine humour that centuries of oppression have been unable to destroy. But it is not the humour which expresses itself in the cheap buffooneries of the stage Irishman. Is an honest laugh needed on St. Patrick's night ? Be it so. But, with such genuinely humorous songs as ' Molly Carew ' and ' Nelly O'Neill ' and 'Pat Molloy,' and so many more, why, in the name of reason, fall back upon the coarse ditties that are at home only on the stage of the low music-halls of Liverpool and London ? The wide field of Irish literature affords, in all reason, abundant scope for humorous recitation. Why, then, draw upon the gross caricatures which represent the typical Irishman as a blundering, capering idiot, who spends his days drinking and fighting and roystering #t fairs, and his nights at 'parties,' where he flings heavy articles of furniture at his host, or at ' wakes,' where he beats the ' friends of the corpse ' with a wooden leg ?

Those who have travelled in the British Isles will readily admit that the average Irishman speaks the English tongue as correctly and intelligibly as the average Englishman or Scotsman. We have no objection to the representation of any Irish accent on the stage, whether it be the close, firm ' brogue 'of the North — ' with a bone in it ' — or that of the South with its liquid vowels and its mellow consonants that melt like honey in the mouth and suggest visions of the Blarney Stone. But Heaven save our ears from ever again being stung and tortured by the alleged ' Irish brogue ' — like that of Denis Bulouuddery — which the young Colonial or other ' foreign ' performer inflicts upon us on St. Patrick's nights ! It is the abomination of desolation in brogues — a thing which is as strange to Ireland as is the stage Irishman himself. Dton Bouck'ault did much to kill the buffoon with his fearfully made ' brogue ' and his capers and his antics and all his pomps and all his works. Such delineators of Irish character as FiiEXY and Sa.u Colltns kicked him downstairs. It is a mystery that people can — and that too at Irish and Catholic demonstrations — be so pig-witted as to laugh and applaud at buffooneries that are a degradation alike to the Catholic and the Irish name.

The scandal is Loo old and ingrained to bo mot with soft words undvehet slippers and yellow kid-glo\es or to be fought with a rapier of' jxiltlcd corkwood. It is a subject for plain speaking. Even the mantle of charity is not broad enough nor elastic enough to co\er the shame of it. Hence we have taken the subject in hand at this earh date, in the hope that the coming celebration may prove a turning-point as regards the future of the stage Irishman in New Zealand. We appeal to the clergy — on whose cooperation every good cause can count, to the Committees, to the performers, and to the audiences that are to be. Keen, lynx-eyed supervision of the programme on the part of the clergy and the Committees, coupled with a hard and fast rule as to encore subjects, will ensure the local cessation of the scandal. To the performers we say: Ne\cr sing or recite a piece which contains a sentiment unworthy of a giand old Catholic land. To the audiences : Never encourage, or e\en tolerate, a performer who, by the "vulgarisms of his subjects, mannerism*, speech, or behaviour, degrades Irish song, humour, literature, or character. We do not go the length of suggesting a volley of the eggs of 1X97, but, where the stau,e booby appeals, we do distinctly suggest and entreat either a departure ni masse from the hall^ or such a vigorous storm of hissing and hooting as will effectually prevent the disgusting caricatures of the Irish race and nation hitherto so shamelessly pre\alent. Irish people and their descendants in this Colony owe thus much to themselves e\en on such elementary grounds as those of justice and self-respect.