THE ADVENTURES OF BLACK PUDDEN

New Zealand Tablet, 2 November 1916, Page 5

THE ADVENTURES OF BLACK PUDDEN

Jimmy Carroll, aged eleven, Brodie’s lane, Dublin, went by the name of ‘ Black Pudden/ and it was neither a misnomer nor a libel. It described him to a nicetyon week days; for on Sunday he washed himself, and on that day he was White Pudden to his youthful friends and admirers. But the duplication of names was short-lived, and he lapsed into Black Pudden permanently, both on Sunday and Monday. When the title was first conferred on him by a budding genius of Brodie’s lane, Jimmy resented it and showed fight. In fact, he immediately planted down on the road his baby sister, Nanny, whom he used to nurse about the streets, and challenged his reviler 'to thry it.’ But the fortunes of war were unfavorable ; so with swollen cheek and nose he resumed the screaming Nannyand he was Black Pudden ever after. ~ These details I learned one Ash Wednesday morn-* ing from a group of ragged urchins in a vacant space behind the church. They had Pudden in their midst, looking shame-faced and criminal,. for they held him fast. Poor, wizen-faced, dirty little fellow with a khaki waistcoat (on which shone a soldier’s button) under his long coat which had covered various respectable frames and had descended through many suburbs before it came to Brodie’s lane : a large woollen muffler depended down to his knees, and he was shuffling to save his hard little encrusted, feet from being trodden on. They were the usual band of poor children of the lanes,

big ones and toddlers, who live in the streets late and early, , and look on the House of God as a place they have a right to go into, and where they do not always behave themselves to the satisfaction of the sacristan, or the worshippers. They are usually in evidence on the most solemn occasions, especially at processions, on which, above all, they love to feast their eyes. Rigid disciplinarians on each other are those little gamins if you catch them just after being chased out of the chapel tor want of decorum ; their zeal for righteousness breaks forth in mutual accusations. Well, they had Black Pudden among them on Ash Wednesday morning, and his accusers were full of indignation as they indicted him: ‘He got the ashes in three churches already, Father, an’ we cot him coinin’ in here for it again.’ It was too true. Pudden’s face gave ample evidence of this new crime in the catalogue. He evidently hungered for reminders that he was dust, for his already dirt-enamelled physiognomy bore several greyish blotches which the rain had enlarged and moistened ; and he hadn’t a word of excuse, but looked abashed and frightened. I Hedo be skippin’ the stations, too, sir,’ said one of his apprehenders. But Pudden got back on his assailant, for, said he, ‘ That fella, sir, do be doin’ the nine Tuesdays iv a Wednesday.’ If you want to know more about the Ash Wednesday culprit then, go to Brodie’s lane. It has an atmosphere of its own, quite distinct, if not distingue. You may not see the dramatis personae but you will hear voices; ‘ I’m on the same lobby wid ya, Mrs. Malone, for two year an’ a-half, an’ I’m not behouldin’ to ya for the squeeze of a blue bag.’ ‘ I have me own dhrawbacks, Mrs. Minogue, but I didn’t wake me mother in portlier. We did it respectable, main.’ ‘ Oh, let ye listen to her talkin’ ; sure her back teeth is floatin’ in X at the present minit.’ ‘ Send yer oul abate of a husband up to the Phanix for a walk in the fresh air to get the dthregs o’ the holidays out iv him, Mrs. Mulcahy.’ But to return to Pudden, he had not long learned to run when he had travelled on every form of vehicle that passed on the street. Tie travelled free. He hung on behind. In this somewhat undignified attitude he first visited the heart of the city—on the back step of a furniture-waggon. IFe returned home on various trams —while the conductor was collecting the fares on top. When he came down, Pudden alighted and awaited another tram in similar circumstances. His predilection for funerals was intense. At an early age he discovered that funerals are a boon to the children of the neighborhood where they happen, for hadn’t he often seen bunches of tiny heads looking out of cabs on the way to Glasnevin ? For the poor parents who attend the funeral of a neighbor unite respect for the dead with a little outing for the children—the cab costs the same. Pudden was never missing from any funeral within a large radius of Brodie’s lane. Everybody thought he was some one else’s child, and asked no questions. On one occasion he made a false calculation. He was in a cab packed with grown-ups and little ones. The men smoked; the little ones looked out of the windows. The silence became intense. ‘ Poor woman,’ says Pudden referring to the corpse. ‘ Who are yeh talkin’ about and who are yeh V says a man taking his pipe out of his mouth with one hand and grabbing Pudden’s ear with the other. ‘ I’m talking about the corpse,’ says Pudden. 4 Chuck him out,’ said the other man. And they did chuck him out just as they passed by Gogan’s of Phibsboro. Sure the corpse was a man ! But the happiest time of Pudden’s life was during the strike, when thousands of children were fed by the nuns. Pshath man, he grew as round as a football with free feeding on the best. He used to be first at the table at George’s Hill of a morning and first out and away- down to Strand street before they were half through there ; and having again absorbed his allotted share there, was away at top speed to the Coombe, where his pleading look admitted him to another tuckin. "■ He was nearly being late, though. As everyone Jnjows, tJie school,* fire there called after various saints

whose names are over the doors, and the babes’ school is called after the Holy Angels, which title has passed on to the little ones. _ Says Pudden, who arrived panting: ‘ Are the Holy Angels afther their cocoa V ‘ They are,’ says another late arrival, who was listening with his naked ear at the keyhole, ‘ an’ I hear Sister'Angela taichin’ them to wipe their faces with their bibs.’. All the same, Pudden got his grub, as he called it, from the good. Sister. One morning Pudden got two breakfasts at George’s Hill at the same sittin’ down. How did he manage it? says someone. Trust Pudden. He went out after he had eaten his share; then washed his face and came back, and no one knew him for the same individual. He tried it on, another day, but Johnny Doyle, of Charles street, a Vincent de Paul man, was too clever for him. Johnny collared him by the muffler and, says he: ‘ Look here to me, Pudden; is your stomach elastic, or are your legs hollow, or, if not, what happens the food you’ve been swallowin’ since seven, o’clock this mornin’ ? You’re as full of cocoa as a mop.’ Pudden daren’t show his nose in George’s Hall after that. What’s worse, his heart failed him the following morning when he heard a man in Brodie’s lane saying to his wife: Mary, I’m after bearin’ that the sthrike is over.’ He was in great consternation. So was she. ‘ Well, Jack,’ says she, ‘ we must be resigned to the will of God ’ —for they, had been having the time of their lives between strike pay, and ship food, and the children fed by the nuns. Pudden wasn’t friends with the next door neighbors—some kind of foreigners whose mainstay had been a dancing and begging bear that was led round the streets of evenings, and added to his other attainments that of carrying a little bucket in his mouth for coppers. Pudden, as I’ve said, wasn’t friends with this family, for on one occasion during the absence of the bear’s owner, Buzzembaum, who was laid up in Richmond Street Hospital, Pudden tried to smuggle out the bear, leading him by the chjpn for a casual ramble—not forgetting the bucket. ' But Madame overtook them at the corner of Francis street, when the bear had only ‘ done ’ two pubs. Jovial company always welcomed the bear on account of his dancing accomplishments, and it must be said that the owners of the shops welcomed him more warmly than they would some other collectors, for they wouldn’t let them off with coppers. Pudden was not friends with the Buzzembaums from that out, not even when the bear suddenly took sick and died. The bear had passed away from life, but not from Pudden’s brain ; for one evening shortly after the sad event Pudden didn’t go out but stayed in over the few embers of fire that smouldered in the grate. Nanny, his little sister, came near him— ‘ Go away, child,’ says he. Chaps bent on mischief whistled outside the door and cried out Pudden, are you cornin’? We’re goin’ to have great gas. We’re after collarin’ a sthray ass. You’re losin’ it.’ ‘ I have a toothache,’ says Pudden, and he would not go, but winked ominously at one of them, known as Scratcher from his contempt of the conventionalities when in company. Off the band went, but Scratcher skulked behind. He was soon joined by Pudden, and they both retired to an old loft. When the poor mother found herself alone in the house Nanny was asleep—she buried her face in her apron and wept. ‘ Everything is gone,’ said she, ‘ and must that go, too, to keep a bit in the mouths of the childer?’ And she rose and opened a trunk and took out a fine coat which her poor husband used to wear on Sundays long ago -before the lorry crushed the life out of him. She unfolded it and spread it out on a chair, and sat down again and wept. The memory of earlier and happier years came back to her again. ‘O acraney,’ says she, ‘ it’s yourself was the fine man standin’ up in it no finer man went into Mass of a Sunday at St. James’s, and now you’re in the cowld clay in Glasnevin. To think it has to go afther his boots and his watch and everything that kem home from the morgue to me the night he was kilt!’ And she did not replace it, but folded it as her tears fell on-

it, tied it with twine and laid it on the table. Then, taking a long look into the empty trunk, says she: ‘ All is gone now.' Quite another scene was taking place in the old loft. Says Puclden, says he ‘ Scratcher, are you game?’ ‘ls it me, Pudden?’ replied that worthy with an offended look, for he had had the honor of being up before his Worship at Green street for stealing a canary from a local cobbler and substituting a yel-low-hammer in its place. Black Pudden was satisfied when he recalled the credentials of Scratcher and proceeded to unburden himself in sntfo voce tones of a plan that required Scratcher’s co-operation and loyalty. The latter was all. attention : never moved a, muscle while Pudden explained how the skin of the old bear, head and all, were drying in Buzzembaum’s outhouse; how nothing would be easier than to steal it ; how he, Black Pudden, would get into it; how they could pad it with hay to make it life-like ; how a piece of whalebone would make the tail stick out; how two glass marbles would do for eyes ; how he, Scratcher, could lead him by the chain—Pudden had annexed that already, likeAvise the little bucketand how they could' both make money. Scratcher never moved, tlie genius of the project overawed him : it was too magnificent to laugh at yet, so he simply put out a dirty fist, and said : ‘ Lave it there, Pudden,’ and neither fist was the dirtier for contact with the other. ‘ Pudden,’ says he, 1 You’re the ’ He didn’t complete the sentence, but said, ‘You’re himself , pointing downwards at the same time. These preliminary compliments being over and gratefully accepted by Pudden, they dug each other in the ribs, and roared with laughter. Then Scratcher got an old rope, adjusted it round Pudden’s neck and led him round the loft as Buzzembaum used to lead the old bear. They could scarcely move, through the thrills of merriment that convulsed them. As for Pudden he was a born bear. Ever since he began to toddle he had followed that celebrity over the city with other urchins and carried little Nanny too. There wasn’t an attitude of the bear that he didn’t know by heart. ‘ When V says Scratcher. ‘Be here to-morrow night,’ says Pudden. And when that same hour on the following night rang out from St. Catherine’s it isn’t two human beings you saw in that loft, but one—-and a big hairy monster from the forest standing on his hind legshis glassy eyes glinting with ferocity and his blood-red tongue —a bit of Nanny’s flannel—and his flapping ears and springing tail. ‘On with the chain now,’ says the wild beast in tones somewhat muffled in hair and hay, 1 and if we don’t feck the makes I’m not Pudden and you’re not Scratcher.’ Getting down the loft ladder was no easy matter. ‘ Bad luck from you, get off me tail,’ says the wild beast of the forest. It’s only the first step:, that costs, and before the bear and his keeper had got twenty yards they felt they were on the road to fortune, for dogs and women and children got out of their way. A neighbor’s cat that had kittens on the top storey of the old tower of St. Audeon’s was just going out for a ramble when she saw the monster and his keeper issuing forth. What did she do? Did she go on? No. , Maternal interests rankled in her bosom and she turned back and sprang into the tower off the old wall ; jumped on the ladder, then on to a loft, then crawled up the water-pipe and then in to her kittens. Had she an ounce of logic—-what feminine has ? —she would have known that no mortal bear could climb up to her kittens. When she had seen that they were safe she went over to the window, 119 feet above the level of the road, and watched further developments. But the event is to her credit and shows it isn’t fair to the species to call opera-singers and other laches ‘ cats.’ Scratcher and the bear went on their way and the bear did a few steps on the flags in front of a pub; then he was led by his keeper into the shopmand the half-boozy occupantswho very likely saw twenty bears instead of onerolled the coppers into the little bucket in the bear’s mouth. He ambled out again and way was made for him by shrieking children who kept at a safe distance. It was a triumphal march,

Scratcher kept emptying the bucket of coppers which he stowed away in his illimitable pocketsfor it’s his father’s cut-down pants he was wearing. Ah, but there’s always a fly in the amber of life. Prosperity turns all our heads. As £he two marched into Bride street they passed a big policeman at the corner. He was near his pension and had bunions, and was given a quiet beat in this locality leading on to the more populous parts where the bear was bent for. As the two passed near the bobby, says the bear in gurgling tones: ‘Twig the cop?’ at which Scratcher laughed. This set 111 Z thinking. It aroused his suspicions. He looked after them. He had never seen a bear in the Zoo with its tail cocked. The mystery thickened when the bear sneezed and then drew his paw across his snout as an urchin would draw his glazed cuff in a like emergency. 111 Z said ‘That’s the act of a Christian and not of a bear.’ He started walking after the two ; they increased their speed. So did he in spite of his seventeen stone and his bunions. ‘ We’re diddled,’ says the bear. ‘ Take the bucket and we’ll run for it.’ Scratcher snatched the bucket and disappeared into a dark hall, and the bear, chain and all, started to run. So did 111 Z. Here words fail to describe the pursuit. Go round and interrogate eye-witnesses how there was bedlam in the —how Dan Carty’s cab-horse let a whole maxim of oats fall unchewed out of his mouth and ran, car and all, till his eyes became as big as lemonade bottleshow Mrs. Hogan fell in a heap and lost her conscience as an eyewitness avers —how the cobbler’s bull-terrier, whose mouth knew the taste of every dog’s blood that dared lo pass the door, got a fit of the shivers. The bear thought of none of these things, and with open mouth and lolling tongue and gleaming teeth and cocked tail and dangling, jangling chain he faced for liberty. On came 111 Z like fate, blowing his whistle as well as he could and wielding his baton. The chain got between the bear’s legs, and he proceeded to buck-jump like a kangaroo. Half the town was behind 111 Z—not one before him. They might throw bricks at the police, but they won’t deny them the honor of grappling with danger. As the bear was turning the corner, making a drive for the Coombe the chain tripped him and he fell head foremost on the road. A scene ensued, which has no parallel in modern history. Several other bobbies attracted by the whistle of 111 Z arrived from where thev were guarding the rear entrance of a hotel. The crowd roared and surged around at a respectful distance, and the police beat in the bear’s head —Pudden had made a ball of himself insideand in the scrimmage one dirty hand protruded. The jaw of that wild-eyed multitude collectively dropped; there was temporary paralysis on the crowd, immediately followed by a simultaneous yell : ‘ He’s devoured a child ! Pull him out —pull him out.’ Several pairs of policemen’s hands gripped the arm of the victim and nearly pulled it out of him ; people turned away in horror and spat out; women fainted, others cried out; ‘May the Lord help the mother that owns him.’ While this awful event was unrolling itself in Bride street something else happened in Brodie’s lane. A coal-porter was returning home from work and he met Buzzembaum. ‘ I’m glad to see that your bear is well again an’ able to go about keepin’ the roof over yeer head,’ says he to Buzzembaum. Arra, man, it nearly knocked him out of his standin’. ‘My bear?’ said Buzzembaum, ‘he’s dead an’ skinned a week ago. ‘ Don’t be coddin’ me,’ says the coal-porter, * didn’t I meet him down near the Coombe and his little bucket half full of coppers and a boy driviu’ him.’ A thought suddenly flashed across Buzzenbaum’s mind ; he remembered Pudden’s attempt to steal out the bear when he was away sick at the Richmond. He rushed into his house and out to the shed and he saw the whole situation. Down the street he tore, knocking sparks out of the flags, up lanes, down alleys and short-cuts, until he came to the swaying, screaming, shouting crowd in Bride street, as the police were extracting Pudden from the depths of the bear. Buzzembaum, being an acrobat, sprang up on a big Guinness man’s back yellin’

out: ‘He’s mine! He’s mine.’ But the Guinness man gave him a father of a paulthogue. Don’t be matin’ a ladder of me,’ says he. When Pudden was rescued, whole and entire, from his perilous situation, a cheer was sent up for the police and the whole crowd wanted to kiss Pudden for his mother, so overjoyed were they at his rescue, when in crawled Buzzembaum through the people’s legs, crying out: ‘That’s the skin of my bear; he shtole it,’- and the half-mad foreigner tore out fistfuls of hay and rags in testimony of the fraud. ‘ That scoundrel sthole it,’ says he to the police, gesticulating wildly and blaspheming like a pound o’ sulphur. The police were flabbergasted; the multitude was puzzled; Pudden discreetly got lost in the crowd who eventually comprehended the situation, and then they nearly had a fit with laughing. The police turned and silently left; the rabble was writhing with merriment; they felt that Pudden had eclipsed anything they had ever heard in Mount joy, where the half of them had spent various periods. But they gave Buzzembaum a royal sendhome. He took up the skin of his bear, battered head and all, and threw it over his shoulder, from which the head hung and the open mouth and gleaming teeth and red tongue—Nanny’s flannel; and one eye missing gave the impression to the following crowd that the bear was alive and was winking at the whole situation. And the crowd, to give vent to their joy fearin’ they’d bust, sang with great zest—- ‘ It’s a long way to Tipperary, It’s a long, long way tew gow.’ while the fuming Buzzembaum trudged home beneath his load. Scratcher and Black Pudden kept up a wireless communication for some time from their hiding places, and when the coast was clear emerged. They indulged in no demonstration of joy—they were too knowing for that; but Scratcher struck his pockets which were filled with coppers, and their jingling produced most exhilarating music. They went by devious routes towards Brodie’s lane, where the poor mother, half distracted at the lateness of the hour, and Nanny in her night apparel and the cat awaited them. ‘ You needn’t pawn me father’s coat now, mother,’ says Pudden as they displayed their wealth. The poor mother, suspecting robbery, got white. ‘ It’s all right, mother, ’twas got honest.’ Even at the risk of being blackened by Pudden's cork-burnt nose to help his likeness to a bear, she gave him a kiss and said, ‘ Jimmy, you’re me jewel iv a boy ’ ; and with tears in her eyes she took the coat out of the parcel and replaced it in the box. ’Twasn’t long till the fragrance of frying sausages ascended in that house in Brodie’s lane and filled the nostrils of Buzzembaum, who was glaring down from his back window at the perpetrators of what he deemed the vilest trick in the records of villany. Scratcher came to the kitchen window, put his thumb on his nose and extended his hand in the shape of a fan in the direction of the gesticulating Buzzembaum; nor did Black Pudden, as he nursed the crowing Nanny eating sugarstick, improve Buzzembaum’s temper when he looked out and cried in irritating tones: ‘ Hould that fella.’ —T. A. Fitzgerald, 0.F.M., in the Catholic Bulletin.