The real truth about Irish humor as a thing to itself and apart is that it is based either on ignorance or on a certain slowness of mind. The Dublin car driver who on being told by a constable that his name was obliterated from his car replied, “Arrah, me name’s not Oblitherated, it’s O’Grady,” no doubt achieved what will pass among the average for humor. All the same, he did not know that he was saying anything good, and his mot, if mot one may call it, was the direct outcome of a profound ignorance of the English language. The books of Irish humor abound with instances of this form of humorsomeness: “You are not opaque, are you?” sarcastically asked one Irishman of another who was standing in front of him at the theater. “Indeed I’m not,” replied the other, “it’s O’Brien that I am.” Clearly one might manufacture this kind of humor ad infinitum. The Chinese are said to consider it a great joke if a man should fall down and break his arm, and I have seen Englishmen laughing at a man who has been unfortunate enough to have his hat blown off in a high wind. But the Irish do not laugh at these things. Even the native bull, of which they are so proud, fails to tickle them. The Irishman says his bull solemnly and unconsciously, and the Englishman does the laughing. In essence the Irish bull is really a blunder. Nuttall, with his usual charming frankness, defines a bull as “a ludicrous inconsistency, or blunder in speech.” Children and Irishmen are always making them: “If it please the coort,” quoth an Irish attorney, “if I am wrong in this, I have another pint which is equally conclusive.” An Irish reporter, giving an account of a burglary, remarked: “After a fruitless search, all the money was recovered, except one pair of boots!” A Dublin clerk on being asked why he was a quarter of an hour late at the office, made answer: “The tram-car I came by was full, so I had to walk.” “This is the seventh night you’ve come home in the morning,” observed an Irish lady to her spouse, “the next time you go out, you’ll stay at home and open the door for yourself.” The following advertisement is said to have appeared in a Dublin newspaper: “Whereas John Hall has fraudulently taken away several articles of wearing apparel, without my knowledge, this is to inform him that if he does not forthwith return the same his name shall be made public.” An Irishman who accidentally came across another Irishman who had failed to meet him after a challenge addressed him in these words: “Well, sir, I met you this morning and you did not turn up; however I am determined to meet you to-morrow morning, whether you come or not.” “Dhrunk!” said a man, speaking of his neighbor, “he was that dhrunk that he made ten halves of ivry word.” A man who was employed as a hod-carrier was told that he must always carry up fourteen bricks in his hod. One morning the supply of bricks ran short, and the man could find but thirteen to put in his hod. In answer to a loud yell from the street one of the masons on top of the scaffolding called out: “What do you want?” “T’row me down wan brick,” bawled Pat, pointing to his hod, “to make me number good.”

Of course, the great and abiding glory of Ireland in the way of bull-makers was the never-to-be-forgotten Sir Boyle Roche. This worthy knight once charged a political opponent with being “an enemy to both kingdoms who wishes to diminish the brotherly affection of the two sister countries.” He also said that “a man differs from a bird in not being able to be in two places at once,” and that “the Irish people were living from hand to mouth, like the birds of the air.” A petition of the citizens of Belfast in favor of Catholic emancipation he stigmatized as “an airy fabric based upon a sandy foundation,” and he expressed his willingness “to give up, not only a part, but, if necessary, even the whole of our constitution to preserve the remainder.” In one of his most famous speeches there occurs the appended passage: “Mr. Speaker, if we once permitted the villainous French Masons to meddle with the buttresses and walls of our ancient constitution, they would never stop, nor stay, sir, until they brought the foundation stones tumbling down about the ears of the nation. If these Gallican villains should invade us, ’tis on that table maybe those honorable members might see their own destinies lying in heaps atop of one another. Here, perhaps, sir, the murderous crew would break in and cut us to pieces, and throw our bleeding heads upon that table to stare us in the face.”

“Is your father alive yet?” inquired one O’Brien of one M’Gorry. “No,” replied M’Gorry solemnly, “not yet!” A beggar called at a house and said: “For the love of hiven, ma’am, give me a crust of bread, for I’m so thirsty I don’t know where I’ll sleep to-night.” All of which is very funny and as who should say, very quaint. But is it humor? It provokes a smile certainly, yet it points to simplicity, rather than subtilty, in the Irish character. Indeed, the absolute truth about the bull is that it is the child of a plentiful lack of wit. A nice derangement of epitaphs, an opening of one’s mouth and a putting of one’s foot in it, may provoke mirth in other people, but it does not prove one to be either witty or merry. It is satisfactory to know that, according to the latest observations, the fine art of bull-making is going out of fashion among Irishmen. The Irish were the inventors of the bull, they brought it to its greatest perfection, they made it redound to their credit as a witty nation; and one cannot deny their right to cease from its manufacture if they see fit. In the House of Commons a bull is nowadays seldom perpetrated, whether consciously or unconsciously, at any rate by the Irish Party. Irish Members of Parliament have grown too wary to be caught bulling. They walk delicately in English-cut frock-coats; they rather pride themselves on their ability to keep down the brogue, and at the bare mention of the word “bull,” they are prone to shiver.

There is one feature of Irish wit and humor which is worthy of admiration and imitation. It is a negative feature truly, but an excellent one. Irishmen do not seem capable of that last infirmary of the doting mind—the pun. To play effectively upon words is, of course, an art in itself, and kept within bounds it is an amusing art; but the man who drops out of art into sheer mechanism, which is what has happened to the average punster, cannot be considered worthy of the respect of his fellows. The Irish, as I have said, do not appear to have descended to these depths. They may be a worn-out, a weary, a dull-witted, an exhausted, and a brooding and melancholy people, but they are not punsters. Herein they have a distinct advantage over the English, among whom the pun appears to obtain wider and wider currency. It is a lamentable fact that there are judges on the English Bench who never let slip an opportunity for punning. It makes juries and the gallery guffaw, and it gets a judge the reputation of being a wit and the possessor of those minor literary graces which are supposed to be included in the judicial prerogative. Judges are commonly understood to be irremovable, but I think that after their third pun retirement should be the only course for them. The man who makes a pun insults the intellect of his auditors and commits a gross outrage upon the language. Let all punsters, whether in high or low places, take heed that they are vulgar and vicious persons, and neither witty nor wise. A thousand honest bulls are less to be deprecated than the weeniest pun that was ever let loose.

Before leaving this part of our subject it is perhaps desirable that we should remember that two of the very wittiest men of our own time have come to us from Ireland. One of them was the late Mr. Oscar Wilde and the other is Mr. George Bernard Shaw. Of Oscar Wilde, excepting that in his prime he was a wit of the first water, I shall say nothing. Mr. George Bernard Shaw, however, is another story. As a reformer and a serious writer I make small account of him. On the other hand, as a wit, he is a portent. He has been an unconscionable time coming into his own, but in America, at any rate, people are beginning, by childlike, dim degrees, to perceive that he has brilliance. If he had published the substance of his printed work in any other form but that of plays, he might have been a recognized and prosperous humorist long ago. The people who supply the wit and humor of the day may be set down, without injustice, for a sorry and indifferent company. Burnand, Payne, Emanuel, Jerome, Lucas, Sims, Hickory Wood, and Barrie—these are some of the names of them. And what do they stand for? Parts of Punch, Eliza, Three Men in a Boat, The Inside Completuar Britanniaware (O blood and knives!), Mustard and Cress, or, The Fat Man’s Sabbath Morning, The White Cat, or, Cooper’s Entire, Peter Pan, or, The Old Man’s CrÈche. Heaven save us and keep us from wishing that this squad of awkward witlings had never been born! Mr. George Bernard Shaw in his sole person, and Irishman though he be, is worth a wilderness of them. Some day we shall find it out, and in that good hour Ireland will be able to boast that one of her sons was nearly as great, nearly as humorous, and nearly as popular as, say, Mr. Mark Twain.