As the Yorkshireman is said to sport on his escutcheon a flea, a fly, and a flitch of bacon, so in the popular imagination an Irishman of the real old sort is usually conceived in association with a pig, a pipe, and a shillelagh. Rightly considered, one supposes that the shillelagh is a survival of the pre-historic club. In any case, it is a weapon of some character, chiefly notable for its handiness in the matter of skull cracking, and believed to be the pride and joy of every Paddy worth his salt. The shillelagh has undoubtedly earned for the Irish a reputation for roguish and heroic delight in battle. “Tread on the tail of my coat, now,” is supposed to be forever on Irish lips, with immediate results in the article of broken heads. And when we English wish the use of a metaphor for rows and scuffles, free fights and so forth, we have a habit of remarking that the affair amounted to “a regular Donnybrook”—Donnybrook, of course, being a sort of feast of shillelaghs to which all Ireland was wont annually to repair. Of the number of shillelaghs in Ireland at the present moment the blue books give no account. It seems to me doubtful whether there are a thousand in the whole country. One may travel through Ireland for weeks on end, and come across nothing of the sort. The only shillelagh I had the pleasure of seeing in the course of a recent, lengthy Irish journey was in the hands of a very ill-clad youth who looked more like a Lancashire cotton operative out of work than a broth of a boy. And the shillelagh in question was of polished black wood without knots, and the top of it had a nickel silver knob, like a beau’s cane. The weapon, indeed, reminded one of nothing so much as a Salmon & Gluckstein, silver-headed, ebony walking-stick, cut short. The owner proudly assured me that it was his bit of a blackthorn, and the finest for miles around. It seems more than probable that the shillelagh-notion of an Irishman had at one time something in it. While Donnybrook Fair has been suppressed, there can be no getting away from the fact that there once was a Donnybrook, and a pretty warm one to boot. Says the poet:
“Who has e’er had the luck to see Donnybrook Fair?
An Irishman, all in his glory, is there,
With his sprig of shillelagh and shamrock so green!
His clothes spic and span new, without e’er a speck,
A neat Barcelona tied round his neat neck;
He goes to a tent, and he spends half a crown,
He meets with a friend, and for love knocks him down
With his sprig of shillelagh and shamrock so green!”
“And for love knocks him down” is quite in the “rale ould” spirit. A spectator[1] of the Donnybrook held on the 29th August 1828, described it as follows: “I rode out again to-day for the first time, to see the fair at Donnybrook, near Dublin, which is a kind of popular festival. Nothing, indeed, can be more national! The poverty, the dirt, and the wild tumult were as great as the glee and merriment with which the cheapest pleasures were enjoyed. I saw things eaten and drunk with delight, which forced me to turn my head quickly away, to remain master of my disgust. Heat and dust, crowd and stench made it impossible to stay long; but these do not annoy the natives. There were many hundred tents, all ragged, like the people, and adorned with tawdry rags instead of flags; many contented themselves with a cross on a hoop; one had hoisted a dead and half-putrid cat as a sign. The lowest sort of rope-dancers and posture-makers exercised their toilsome vocation on stages of planks, and dressed in shabby finery, dancing and grimacing in the dreadful heat till they were completely exhausted. A third part of the public lay, or rather rolled, about drunk; others ate, screamed, shouted and fought. The women rode about, sitting two or three upon an ass, pushing their way through the crowd, smoked with great delight, and coquetted with their sweethearts.” It is notable, however, that our eye-witness continues: “My reverence for truth compels me to add, that not the slightest trace of English brutality was to be perceived; they were more like French people, though their gaiety was mingled with more humor and more genuine good-nature; both of which are national traits of the Irish, and are always doubled by poteen.”
Not only is Donnybrook gone, but the whole atmosphere which rendered Donnybrook possible appears to have gone with it. The knocking down of a friend for love or out of sheer gaiety and volatility of soul no longer ranks among the Irishman’s accomplishments. If he fights at all, which is seldom, he fights now with clenched teeth and a fierce hatred at his heart, and usually it is about religion and has nothing whatever to do with either fun or poteen. In Dublin no more fighting goes on than occurs in the average English city of the same size. In Belfast the fighting is frequent, but it is eminently Scotch, and therefore not to be charged against Ireland. Out of Ulster, there is scarcely any fighting at all, poteen or no poteen. At the same time in one city out of Ulster, which I will not name, I was advised by the proprietor of an hotel to prolong my stay because “we are expecting riots on Monday.” Whether the riots came off or not I do not know, but I saw no accounts of them in the papers.
It is, of course, common knowledge that, shillelaghs laid on one side, the Irishman makes an admirable soldier. In point of fact he is a much better soldier than the Scot, though he has never had the credit for it. The best English generals from Wellington to Lord Roberts have been Irishmen, which is paradox, not a “bull.” The Irish never run away; in our late wars certain non-Irish regiments, which were neither English nor Welsh, did run away. It is significant that Mr. Kipling’s soldiers—in Soldiers Three for example—are Irish, Cockney, and Yorkshire, and that the Irishman is set down for the smartest man. I have seen it remarked, and I believe it can be justified out of the military histories, that while the Irish and English regiments have usually done the rough and tumble hand-to-hand fighting in our most famous engagements, the gentlemen with the bare knees have had the good fortune to be sent in at the tail end of the trouble, merely to execute a little ornamental sweeping up. To the eye of officers and women “nothing looks nicer” than kilts and spats. To disarrange them were a pity; therefore wherever possible we shall hold them “in reserve.” On the parade ground and in processions the same thing applies; the plaudits of the crowd being invariably forthcoming for the “bonnie bare-legged laddies” newly enlisted, mayhap, out of Glasgow and Dumfries, while “seasoned Irish warriors” go past without a hand-clap. But it is the kilts that do it. There may be nothing in this, and anyway I do not suppose that the Irish care twopence. But the points for us to remember while we are on this part of our subject are, that the shillelagh is an effete weapon, that in Irish differences the principle of “a word and a blow” does not prevail, and that the Irish soldier is very competent and very courageous.
