Humorous story of Father O’Leary and a bear—Mistaken notions respecting Ireland on the Continent—Lord Ventry and his tenant: an anecdote characteristic of the Irish peasant.

I frequently had an opportunity of meeting at my father-in-law’s, Mr. Grogan’s, where he often dined, a worthy and celebrated priest, Father O’Leary;—and have listened with great zest to anecdotes which he used to tell with a quaint yet spirited humour quite unique. His manner, his air, his countenance, all bespoke wit, talent, and a good heart. I liked his company excessively, and have often regretted I did not cultivate his acquaintance more, or recollect his witticisms better: but I was then young, not a public person, and somewhat out of his line in society. It was singular, but it was fact, that even before Father O’Leary opened his lips, a stranger would say, “That is an Irishman,” and at the same time guess him to be a priest.

One anecdote, in particular, I remember his relating with singular animation. Coming from St. Omer, he told us, he stopped a few days to visit a brother priest in the town of Boulogne sur Mer (who lives there still). Here he heard of a great curiosity which all the people were running to see,—a curious bear that some fishermen had taken at sea out of a wreck; it had sense, and attempted to utter a sort of lingo which they called patois marine, but which nobody understood.

O’Leary gave his six sous to see the wonder, which was shown at the port by candle-light, and was a very odd kind of animal, no doubt. The bear had been taught a hundred tricks, all to be performed at the keeper’s word of command. It was late in the evening when O’Leary saw him, and the bear seemed sulky: the keeper, however, with a short spike at the end of a pole, made him move about briskly. He marked on sand what o’clock it was with his paw, and distinguished the men and women in a very comical way; in fact, our priest was quite diverted. The beast at length grew tired; the keeper hit him with the pole; he stirred a little, but continued quite sullen: his master coaxed him—no! he would not work! At length, the brute of a keeper gave him two or three sharp pricks with the goad, when he roared out most tremendously, and rising on his hind legs, cursed his tormentor in very good Irish. O’Leary went immediately to the mayor, whom he informed that the blackguards of fishermen had sewed up a poor Irishman in a bear-skin, and were showing him for six sous! This civic dignitary, who had himself seen the bear, would not believe it: at last O’Leary prevailed on him to accompany him to the room. On their arrival the bear was still upon duty; and O’Leary, stepping up to him, says, “Gand e tha hawn, Pat?” (How do you do, Pat?)—“Slonger a mahugouthe,” (Pretty well, thank’ee,) says the bear. The people were surprised to hear how plainly he spoke: but the mayor directly ordered him to be ripped up; and after some opposition and a good deal of difficulty, Pat stepped forth (stark naked) out of the bear-skin wherein he had been fourteen or fifteen days most cleverly stitched. The women made off; the men stood astonished; and the mayor ordered the keepers to be put in gaol unless they satisfied the bear and the authorities, which was presently done. The bear afterward told O’Leary that he was very well fed, and did not care much about the clothing, only they worked him too hard. The fishermen had found him at sea on a hen-coop, which had saved him from going to the bottom with a ship wherein he had a little venture of dried cod from Dungarvon, and which was bound from Waterford to Bilboa. He could not speak a word of any language but Irish, and had never been at sea before. The fishermen had brought him in, fed him well, and endeavoured to repay themselves by showing him as a curiosity.

O’Leary’s mode of telling this story was quite admirable. I never heard any anecdote (and I believe this one to have been true) related with so much genuine drollery, which was enhanced by his not changing a muscle himself, while every one of his hearers was in a paroxysm of laughter.

Another anecdote he used to give, though dry enough in itself, with incomparable dramatic humour. By-the-bye, all his stories were in some way national; and this affords me occasion to remark, that I think Ireland is at this moment nearly as little known on many parts of the continent as it seems to have been then. I have myself heard it more than once spoken of in Brittany as an English town.

At Nancy, where Father O’Leary, as he told us, was travelling, his native country happened to be mentioned; when one of the sociÉtÉ, a quiet French farmer of Burgundy, asked in an unassuming tone, “If Ireland stood encore?”—“Encore!” said an astonished John Bull, a courier coming from Germany, “encore! to be sure she does: we have her yet, I assure you, Monsieur.”—“Though neither very safe nor very sound,” interposed an officer of the Irish brigade, who happened to be present, looking over significantly at O’Leary, and not very complacently at the courier.—“And pray, Monsieur,” rejoined the John Bull to the Frenchman, “why encore?”—“Pardon, Monsieur,” replied the Frenchman, “I heard it had been worn out, (fatiguÉ) long ago by the great number of people that were living in it!”

The fact was (I believe it not at all exaggerated), the Frenchman had been told, and really understood, that Ireland was a large house where the English were wont to send their idle vagabonds, and from whence they were drawn out again as they were wanted to fill the ships and army:—and (I speak this from my own personal knowledge,) in some interior parts of the continent the existence of Ireland, as a kingdom, is totally unknown; it is at best considered as about a match for Jersey, or some other little island. On the sea-coasts they are better informed. This need not surprise us, when we have heard of a native of St. Helena formerly, (who never had been out of the island,) who seriously asked an English officer “If there were many landing-places in England?” This may be a standing jest, but it is highly illustrative.

Some ideas of the common Irish are so strange, and uttered so unconsciously, that in the mouths of any other people they might be justly considered profane. In those of my countrymen, however, such expressions are idiomatic, and certainly spoken without the least idea of profanity.

The last Lord Ventry was considered, before his father’s death, the oldest heir-apparent in the Irish Peerage, to which his father (originally low enough) had been raised in 1800, in consequence of an arrangement made with Lord Castlereagh at the time of the Union. He had for many years been bed-ridden, and had advanced to a very great age latterly without any corresponding utility: yet little apprehensions were entertained of his speedy dissolution, and the family were in despair.

A tenant on the estate, the stability of whose lease depended entirely on the son surviving the father, and who was beginning to doubt which of them might die of old age first, said seriously to the heir-apparent, but without the slightest idea of any sort of impropriety either as respected God or man—

“Ah, then, Master Squire Mullins, isn’t it mighty strange that my poor ould landlord (Heaven preserve his noble Lordship!) shou’d lie covered up in the bed all this time past?—I think, plase your honour, that it would be well done to take his Lordship (Lord bless his honour!) up to Crow-Patrick, and hold him up there as high as could be—just to show his Lordship a bit to the Virgin. For I’m sure and sartin, plase your honour, if God Almighty hadn’t quite forgot his Lordship, he would have taken him home to himself long and many a day ago.”

The relation of this anecdote appears to have been ominous, as my Lord the son was also carried off to his forefathers (if he could find them) a few months after the first edition of this work was published.

The eccentric traits of the genuine Irish character are certainly wearing fast away; and if some contemporary of by-gone persons and customs did not take the trouble of recording those traits, they would be considered (if related in future times) as ridiculous fabrications.