The poorhouse and the policeman have considerably abated Irish mendicants, especially in the towns; but in the country and in remote places, ‘the long-remembered beggar’ is still an institution. The workhouse is held in abhorrence by this class of vagrant, and any amount of suffering is preferred to the confinement, the enforced cleanliness, and the discipline it involves. The Irish poor are, as a rule, indifferent to creature comforts. They love their liberty under hedge and open sky; and resemble the dog in the fable, who preferred his precarious bone and freedom to the good feeding and luxuries of his tied-up friend. A wretched old woman, decrepit and barefoot, appearing on the hall-door steps of a house she was in the habit of visiting, would be remonstrated with in vain by her patrons, however delicately the obnoxious subject, the poorhouse, was approached.

‘Now, Biddy, it is all very well in summer to go about; but in this bitter wintry weather, would it not be better to go where you would have a good bed and shelter, and be warmed and fed and comfortably clothed, instead of shivering about, ragged and hungry? Why not try—only for a while, you know, till summer comes back—why not try the poorhouse?’

‘The poorhouse!’ (firing up); ‘I'd rather die than go there! I'd rather lie down under the snow at the side of the road and die! But sure the neighbours will help me. There isn't one 'ill refuse me an air of the fire or a night's lodging, or maybe a bit and sup of an odd time. And you're going to give me something yourself, my lady, avourneen, you are! Don't I see it in yer face? You're going to bring out the dust of dry tay and the grain of sugar and the couple o' coppers to the poor old granny. Ah yes! And maybe the sarvant-maids will have an ould cast petticoat to throw to her, for to keep the life in her ould carcase this perishing day.’

Before the famine of 1846-7, which brought about a change in the food of the peasantry, systematic begging was the annual custom. Potatoes were then the sole food of the working-classes, and the farmers paid their labourers by allowances of potato-ground (half or quarter acres), with seed to till it. Money, therefore, was little in circulation among the lower orders. In the interval between the consumption of the old potatoes and the coming in of the new—expressively known as ‘the bitter six weeks’—there were occasionally great privation and distress. Whole families turning out of their cabin and leaving it with locked door, might at this time be seen trooping along the roads—the father away ‘harvesting’ or getting work where he could. As they went along, stopping at every cabin on their route, a few potatoes would be handed to them—less or more, according as the stock of the donors was holding out—so that by nightfall the bag on the mother's back would have increased to sufficient proportions to furnish a good meal for the family. And thus they continued to live until the new potatoes were fit to dig, when the cabin-door was unlocked, and plenty once more the order of the day.

The charity of the poor to the poor is very touching, and nowhere do we see more of this than in Ireland. The people are naturally good-natured and full of kindly impulses; and they attach moreover, a superstitious, almost religious value to the blessing of the poor, with an equal dread of their curse.

A fatal instance of the latter feeling occurred near Limerick some years since.

A young man fell in love with a girl who did not return his affection; telling him plainly that it was useless to persevere, as she never could care for him. He took his disappointment so much to heart that he fled the country and went off to America.

Maddened with rage and despair at the loss of her only son—the darling of her heart and her sole support, for she was a widow—the bereaved mother went straight from the ship that took away her boy, to the young woman's house. Kneeling down on the threshold, and stretching her arms to heaven with frantic gesticulation, she called down its vengeance upon her trembling hearer, pouring forth a torrent of imprecations upon her head.

By the broken heart of her son—by the widow's hearth made desolate—by the days and nights of lonely misery before her, she cursed the girl! And the latter, appalled by her bitter eloquence, and superstitiously convinced that those awful curses would ‘cleave to her like a garment,’ never rallied from the terror and the shock to her nerves of this vindictive outbreak. She went into a decline, haunted by the woman's dreadful words; and her death confirmed the popular belief.

To return to our subject. Although the use of Indian meal and griddle-bread as articles of food in place of the exclusive potato, together with increased wages and the payment of labour in cash instead of kind, have abolished the annual begging migrations, mendicants still abound. The tourist season brings them out, as numerous as the flies in summer, and equally troublesome. A party of English clergymen visiting Killarney were pestered, as most travellers are there, by beggars. These reverend gentlemen had, for greater convenience, adopted the usual tourist costume, with the exception of one who belonged to the ultra High Church party, and retained his clerical garb in all its strictness. His dress caused him to be mistaken by the peasantry wherever he went for a Roman Catholic priest; and he was not a little startled when, in Tralee, a girl flung herself down on her knees before him in the muddy street to ask his blessing. The abject obeisance of the people to their priests in those days, was an unaccustomed sight to an English clergyman.

The traveller in question soon became accustomed to the position, and used it for the benefit of his party. Tormented on one occasion by the importunities of a crowd of beggars who followed them, he suddenly stopped. Drawing a line across the road with his stick, he cried to the clamorous troop: ‘Pass that mark, and the curse of the priest will be upon you!’ All fled in a moment!

Another time the same individual utilised the mistake in the cause of humanity. The party were travelling on a jaunting-car, and going up a steep hill, the driver was flogging his horse unmercifully.

‘My friend,’ said the clergyman, addressing the man, ‘do you know what will happen to you, if you do that—when you go to the next world?’

‘O no, yer Riverence. And sure how could I?—What is it now?’ pulling off his hat and looking greatly frightened.

‘You will be turned into a horse, and devils will be employed to flog you, just as you're flogging now that poor beast of yours.’

‘Ah, don't, yer Riverence—don't say that now! for the love of heaven, sir, don't! An' I'll promise on my two knees to give him the best of thratement from this out, and never to lay whip into him that way again.’

The beggars in towns are often very caustic in their remarks, and indulge in personalities more witty than polite, when unsuccessful in their demands.

A late well-known Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, remarkable for a peculiarly shaped and very ugly nose, resisting the importunities of a woman for ‘a ha'penny for the honour of the blessed Vargin,’ she turned upon him with: ‘The Lord forgive you! And that He may presarve yer eyesight, I pray; for faix 'tis yerself has the bad nose for spectacles.’

Another spiteful old beldam of the same stamp attacked Sir A. B. for alms, following him down the whole length of Sackville Street. The baronet had tender feet, which with other uncomely infirmities, caused his gait to be none of the most graceful.

‘Ye won't give it—won't ye?’ broke out the woman in an angry whine. ‘O thin, God help the poor! And look now; if yer heart was as soft as yer feet, it wouldn't be in vain we'd be axing yer charity this day.’

‘That the “grace of God” may never enter into your house but on parchment!’ was the terse and bitter anathema in which another gave vent to her wrathful disappointment. She knew that all writs are on parchment, and had probably learned from cruel experience the formula with which they commence: ‘Victoria, by the grace of God, Queen, &c.’

The ingenious proceedings of Captain C—— touching the mendicant fraternity, should not be omitted while on the subject.

When about to be quartered with his men in Mullingar, a friend told him before going there that the place was infested with beggars; and that his predecessor, the commanding officer of the last troop, had been greatly annoyed by them. The captain listened attentively, resolving to take his measures. On the night of his arrival at the hotel he called up the waiter.

‘I am informed,’ he said, ‘that you have a great many beggars in this town.’

‘Well, yes, sir; we certainly have,’ replied the waiter.

‘I wish to see them all—all collected together under the windows of this hotel. Do you think that could be managed?’

‘If you wish it, sir. O yes; Certainly, sir,’ said the man, with the usual waiter-like readiness to promise everything under the sun; albeit a little taken aback at so unusual a request.

‘Very well; let them be all here to-morrow at twelve o'clock precisely.’

Such a motley assemblage of rags and wretchedness as presented itself under the hotel windows next day was seldom seen. The tidings had spread like wild-fire; and from every lane and alley of the town came crowding in the blind, the lame, the maimed, the aged—beggary, deformity, idiotcy, and idleness in all their varieties. Curiosity and greed were equally on the qui vive, and the excitement of the eager crowd may be imagined.

At length the captain appeared on the balcony. There was a breathless silence.

‘Are you all here,’ he said, ‘every one?’

‘Every mother's sowl of us, plaze your honour, barring Blind Bess with her crippled son, and the Gineral.’

‘Then call Blind Bess and the General,’ said the captain. ‘I want you all.’

‘Sure enough, here's Bess,’ cried a voice, as a double-barrelled mendicant in the shape of a blind woman with a sturdy cripple strapped on her shoulders, came hurrying up.

‘And here's the Gineral driving like mad up the street. But sure yer honour won't give him anything—a gintleman that keeps his carriage!’ shouted a wag in the crowd.

A dilapidated old hand-cart dragged by a girl now made its appearance. It was covered at top with a piece of tattered oil-cloth, and from a hole cut in the middle of this protruded the head of ‘the Gineral,’ decorated with the remains of an old cocked-hat. The shrivelled face of the old cripple was half covered with a grizzly beard, and his rheumy eyes peered helplessly about in a feeble stare.

‘Now,’ said the captain, ‘ladies and gentlemen’—— A murmur in the crowd, especially among the feminine portion.

‘Ah thin, bless his darlin' face; 'tis he that has the civil tongue in him, and knows how to spake to the poor!’

‘Not a bit o' pride in him; no more than in the babby unborn!’

‘Sure any one to look at him would know he was good! Isn't it wrote upon his features?’

‘No nagur [niggard] like the one was here before him, that never gave a poor man as much as a dog would keep in his fist.’

‘Ladies and gentlemen—you are, I am told, all here assembled. I have requested your attendance in order to state that I have given, for your benefit, one pound to the parson, and one pound to the priest of the parish; and further to inform you that during my stay in Mullingar, not a single farthing beyond these sums will I bestow on any one of you!’

A howl of disappointment rose from the listeners. The captain did not wait to note the effect of his words. He disappeared into his room in time to be out of reach of the chorus of abuse with which—their first surprise over—his speech was received by his enraged audience.