The Father Blake, of whom Andy spoke, was more familiarly known by the name of Father Phil, by which title Andy himself would have named him, had he been telling how Father Phil cleared a fair, or equally “leathered” both the belligerent parties in a faction-fight, or turned out the contents (or malcontents) of a public-house at an improper hour; but when he spoke of his Reverence respecting ghostly matters, the importance of the subject begot higher consideration for the man, and the familiar “Father Phil” was dropped for the more respectful title of Father Blake. By either title, or in whatever capacity, the worthy Father had great influence over his parish, and there was a free-and-easy way with him, even in doing the most solemn duties, which agreed wonderfully with the devil-may-care spirit of Paddy. Stiff and starched formality in any way is repugnant to the very nature of Irishmen; and I believe one of the surest ways of converting all Ireland from the Romish faith would be found, if we could only manage to have her mass celebrated with the dry coldness of the Reformation. This may seem ridiculous at first sight, and I grant it is a grotesque way of viewing the subject, but yet there may be truth in it; and to consider it for a moment seriously, look at the fact, that the north of Ireland is the stronghold of Protestantism, and that the north is the least Irish portion of the island. There is a strong admixture of Scotch there, and all who know the country will admit that there is nearly as much difference between men from the north and south of Ireland as from different countries. The Northerns retain much of the cold formality and unbending hardness of the stranger-settlers from whom they are descended, while the Southerns exhibit that warm-hearted, lively, and poetical temperament for which the country is celebrated. The prevailing national characteristics of Ireland are not to be found in the north, where Protestantism flourishes; they are to be found in the south and west, where it has never taken root. And though it has never seemed to strike theologians, that in their very natures some people are more adapted to receive one faith than another, yet I believe it to be true, and perhaps not quite unworthy of consideration. There are forms, it is true, and many in the Romish church, but they are not cold forms, but attractive rather, to a sensitive people; besides, I believe those very forms, when observed the least formally, are the most influential on the Irish; and perhaps the splendours of a High Mass in the gorgeous temple of the Holy City would appeal less to the affections of an Irish peasant than the service he witnesses in some half-thatched ruin by a lone hillside, familiarly hurried through by a priest who has sharpened his appetite by a mountain ride of some fifteen miles, and is saying mass (for the third time most likely) before breakfast, which consummation of his morning's exercise he is anxious to arrive at.

It was just in such a chapel, and under such circumstances, that Father Blake was celebrating the mass at which Andy was present, and after which he hoped to obtain a word of advice from the worthy Father, who was much more sought after on such occasions than his more sedate superior who presided over the spiritual welfare of the parish—and whose solemn celebration of the mass was by no means so agreeable as the lighter service of Father Phil. The Rev. Dominick Dowling was austere and long-winded; his mass had an oppressive effect on his congregation, and from the kneeling multitude might be seen eyes fearfully looking up from under bent brows, and low breathings and subdued groans often rose above the silence of his congregation, who felt like sinners, and whose imaginations were filled with the thoughts of Heaven's anger; while the good-humoured face of the light-hearted Father Phil produced a corresponding brightness on the looks of his hearers, who turned up their whole faces in trustfulness to the mercy of that Heaven whose propitiatory offering their pastor was making for them in cheerful tones, which associated well with thoughts of pardon and salvation.

Father Dominick poured forth his spiritual influence like a strong dark stream that swept down the hearer—hopelessly struggling to keep his head above the torrent, and dreading to be overwhelmed at the next word. Father Phil's religion bubbled out like a mountain rill—bright, musical, and refreshing. Father Dominick's people had decidedly need of cork jackets; Father Phil's might drink and be refreshed.

But with all this intrinsic worth, he was, at the same time, a strange man in exterior manners; for, with an abundance of real piety, he had an abruptness of delivery and a strange way of mixing up an occasional remark to his congregation in the midst of the celebration of the mass, which might well startle a stranger; but this very want of formality made him beloved by the people, and they would do ten times as much for Father Phil as for Father Dominick.

On the Sunday in question, when Andy attended the chapel, Father Phil intended delivering an address to his flock from the altar, urging them to the necessity of bestirring themselves in the repairs of the chapel, which was in a very dilapidated condition, and at one end let in the rain through its worn-out thatch. A subscription was necessary; and to raise this among a very impoverished people was no easy matter. The weather happened to be unfavourable, which was most favourable to Father Phil's purpose, for the rain dropped its arguments through the roof upon the kneeling people below in the most convincing manner; and as they endeavoured to get out of the wet, they pressed round the altar as much as they could, for which they were reproved very smartly by his Reverence in the very midst of the mass, and these interruptions occurred sometimes in the most serious places, producing a ludicrous effect, of which the worthy Father was quite unconscious in his great anxiety to make the people repair the chapel.

A big woman was elbowing her way towards the rails of the altar, and Father Phil, casting a sidelong glance at her, sent her to the right-about, while he interrupted his appeal to Heaven to address her thus:—“Agnus Dei—you'd better jump over the rails of the althar, I think. Go along out o' that, there's plenty o' room in the chapel below there.”

Then he would turn to the altar, and proceed with the service, till turning again to the congregation he perceived some fresh offender.

“Orate, fratres!—will you mind what I say to you and go along out of that? there's room below there. Thrue for you, Mrs. Finn—it's a shame for him to be thramplin' on you. Go along, Darby Casy, down there, and kneel in the rain; it's a pity you haven't a dacent woman's cloak undher you indeed!—Orate, fratres!”

Then would the service proceed again, and while he prayed in silence at the altar, the shuffling of feet edging out of the rain would disturb him, and casting a backward glance, he would say—

“I hear you there—can't you be quiet and not be disturbin' the mass, you haythens?”

Again he proceeded in silence, till the crying of a child interrupted him. He looked round quickly.

“You'd better kill the child, I think, thramplin' on him, Lavery. Go out o' that—your conduct is scandalous—Dominus vobiscum!” Again he turned to pray, and after some time he made an interval in the service to address his congregation on the subject of the repairs, and produced a paper containing the names of subscribers to that pious work who had already contributed, by way of example to those who had not.

“Here it is,” said Father Phil, “here it is, and no denying it—down in black and white; but if they who give are down in black, how much blacker are those who have not given at all!—but I hope they will be ashamed of themselves when I howld up those to honour who have contributed to the uphowlding of the house of God. And isn't it ashamed o' yourselves you ought to be, to leave His house in such a condition—and doesn't it rain a'most every Sunday, as if He wished to remind you of your duty? aren't you wet to the skin a'most every Sunday? Oh, God is good to you! to put you in mind of your duty, giving you such bitther cowlds that you are coughing and sneezin' every Sunday to that degree that you can't hear the blessed mass for a comfort and a benefit to you; and so you'll go on sneezin' until you put a good thatch on the place, and prevent the appearance of the evidence from Heaven against you every Sunday, which is condemning you before your faces, and behind your backs too, for don't I see this minit a strame o' wather that might turn a mill running down Micky Mackavoy's back, between the collar of his coat and his shirt?”

Here a laugh ensued at the expense of Micky Mackavoy, who certainly was under a very heavy drip from the imperfect roof.

“And is it laughing you are, you haythens?” said Father Phil, reproving the merriment which he himself had purposely created, that he might reprove it. “Laughing is it you are—at your backslidings and insensibility to the honour of God—laughing, because when you come here to be saved you are lost intirely with the wet; and how, I ask you, are my words of comfort to enter your hearts, when the rain is pouring down your backs at the same time? Sure I have no chance of turning your hearts while you are undher rain that might turn a mill—but once put a good roof on the house, and I will inundate you with piety! Maybe it's Father Dominick you would like to have coming among you, who would grind your hearts to powdher with his heavy words.” (Here a low murmur of dissent ran through the throng.) “Ha! ha! so you wouldn't like it, I see. Very well, very well—take care then, for if I find you insensible to my moderate reproofs, you hard-hearted haythens—you malefacthors and cruel persecuthors, that won't put your hands in your pockets, because your mild and quiet poor fool of a pasthor has no tongue in his head!—I say your mild, quiet, poor fool of a pasthor (for I know my own faults, partly, God forgive me!), and I can't spake to you as you deserve, you hard-living vagabones, that are as insensible to your duties as you are to the weather. I wish it was sugar or salt you were made of, and then the rain might melt you if I couldn't: but no—them naked rafthers grin in your face to no purpose—you chate the house of God; but take care, maybe you won't chate the divil so aisy”—(here there was a sensation). “Ha! ha! that makes you open your ears, does it? More shame for you; you ought to despise that dirty enemy of man, and depend on something betther—but I see I must call you to a sense of your situation with the bottomless pit undher you, and no roof over you. Oh dear! dear! dear!—I'm ashamed of you—troth, if I had time and sthraw enough, I'd rather thatch the place myself than lose my time talking to you; sure the place is more like a stable than a chapel. Oh, think of that!—the house of God to be like a stable!—for though our Redeemer, in his humility, was born in a stable, that is no reason why you are to keep his house always like one.

“And now I will read you the list of subscribers, and it will make you ashamed when you hear the names of several good and worthy Protestants in the parish, and out of it, too, who have given more than the Catholics.”

He then proceeded to read the following list, which he interlarded copiously with observations of his own; making vivâ voce marginal notes as it were upon the subscribers, which were not unfrequently answered by the persons so noticed, from the body of the chapel, and laughter was often the consequence of these rejoinders, which Father Phil never permitted to pass without a retort. Nor must all this be considered in the least irreverent. A certain period is allowed between two particular portions of the mass, when the priest may address his congregation on any public matter: an approaching pattern, or fair, or the like; in which, exhortations to propriety of conduct, or warnings against faction fights, &c., are his themes. Then they only listen in reverence. But when a subscription for such an object as that already mentioned is under discussion, the flock consider themselves entitled to “put in a word” in case of necessity.

This preliminary hint is given to the reader, that he may better enter into the spirit of Father Phil's

SUBSCRIPTION LIST FOR THE REPAIRS AND ENLARGEMENT OF BALLY-SLOUGHGUTPHERY CHAPEL

“I gave you ten, plaze, your reverence,” shouted Jemmy, “and by the same token, you may remember it was on the Nativity of the Blessed Vargin, sir, I gave you the second five shillin's.”

“So you did, Jemmy,” cried Father Phil—“I put a little cross before it, to remind me of it; but I was in a hurry to make a sick call when you gave it to me, and forgot it after: and indeed myself doesn't know what I did with that same five shillings.”

Here a pallid woman, who was kneeling near the rails of the altar, uttered an impassioned blessing, and exclaimed, “Oh, that was the very five shillings, I'm sure, you gave to me that very day, to buy some little comforts for my poor husband, who was dying in the fever!”—and the poor woman burst into loud sobs as she spoke.

A deep thrill of emotion ran through the flock as this accidental proof of their poor pastor's beneficence burst upon them; and as an affectionate murmur began to rise above the silence which that emotion produced, the burly Father Philip blushed like a girl at this publication of his charity, and even at the foot of that altar where he stood, felt something like shame in being discovered in the commission of that virtue so highly commended by the Holy One to whose worship the altar was raised. He uttered a hasty “Whisht—whisht!” and waved with his outstretched hands his flock into silence.

In an instant one of those sudden changes common to an Irish assembly, and scarcely credible to a stranger, took place. The multitude was hushed—the grotesque of the subscription list had passed away and was forgotten, and that same man and that same multitude stood in altered relations—they were again a reverent flock, and he once more a solemn pastor; the natural play of his nation's mirthful sarcasm was absorbed in a moment in the sacredness of his office; and with a solemnity befitting the highest occasion, he placed his hands together before his breast, and raising his eyes to Heaven he poured forth his sweet voice, with a tone of the deepest devotion, in that reverential call to prayer, “Orate, fratres.”

The sound of a multitude gently kneeling down followed, like the soft breaking of a quiet sea on a sandy beach; and when Father Philip turned to the altar to pray, his pent-up feelings found vent in tears; and while he prayed, he wept.

I believe such scenes as this are not of unfrequent occurrence in Ireland; that country so long-suffering, so much maligned, and so little understood.

Suppose the foregoing scene to have been only described antecedent to the woman in the outbreak of her gratitude revealing the priest's charity, from which he recoiled,—suppose the mirthfulness of the incidents arising from reading the subscription-list—a mirthfulness bordering on the ludicrous—to have been recorded, and nothing more, a stranger would be inclined to believe, and pardonable in the belief, that the Irish and their priesthood were rather prone to be irreverent; but observe, under this exterior, the deep sources of feeling that lie hidden and wait but the wand of divination to be revealed. In a thousand similar ways are the actions and the motives of the Irish understood by those who are careless of them; or worse, misrepresented by those whose interest, and too often business, it is to malign them.

Father Phil could proceed no further with the reading of the subscription-list, but finished the office of the mass with unusual solemnity. But if the incident just recorded abridged his address, and the publication of donors' names by way of stimulus to the less active, it produced a great effect on those who had but smaller donations to drop into the plate; and the grey-headed collector, who could have numbered the scanty coin before the bereaved widow had revealed the pastor's charity, had to struggle his way afterwards through the eagerly outstretched hands that showered their hard-earned pence upon the plate, which was borne back to the altar heaped with contributions, heaped as it had not been seen for many a day. The studied excitement of their pride and their shame—and both are active agents in the Irish nature—was less successful than the accidental appeal to their affections.

Oh! rulers of Ireland, why have you not sooner learned to lead that people by love, whom all your severity has been unable to drive? [Footnote: When this passage was written Ireland was disturbed (as she has too often been) by special parliamentary provocation:—the vexatious vigilance of legislative lynxes—the peevishness of paltry persecutors.]

When the mass was over, Andy waited at the door of the chapel to catch “his riverence” coming out, and obtain his advice about what he overheard from Larry Hogan; and Father Phil was accordingly accosted by Andy just as he was going to get into his saddle to ride over to breakfast with one of the neighbouring farmers, who was holding the priest's stirrup at the moment. The extreme urgency of Andy's manner, as he pressed up to the pastor's side, made the latter pause and inquire what he wanted. “I want to get some advice from your riverence,” said Andy.

“'Faith, then, the advice I give you is never to stop a hungry man when he is going to refresh himself,” said Father Phil, who had quite recovered his usual cheerfulness, and threw his leg over his little grey hack as he spoke. “How could you be so unreasonable as to expect me to stop here listening to your case, and giving you advice indeed, when I have said three masses [Footnote: The office of the mass must be performed fasting.] this morning, and rode three miles; how could you be so unreasonable, I say?”

“I ax your riverence's pardon,” said Andy; “I wouldn't have taken the liberty, only the thing is mighty particular intirely.”

“Well, I tell you again, never ask a hungry man advice; for he is likely to cut his advice on the patthern of his stomach, and it's empty advice you'll get. Did you never hear that a 'hungry stomach has no ears'?”

The farmer who was to have the honour of the priest's company to breakfast exhibited rather more impatience than the good-humoured Father Phil, and reproved Andy for his conduct.

“But it's so particular,” said Andy.

“I wondher you would dar' to stop his riverence, and he black fastin'. Go 'long wid you!”

“Come over to my house in the course of the week, and speak to me,” said Father Phil, riding away.

Andy still persevered, and taking advantage of the absence of the farmer, who was mounting his own nag at the moment, said the matter of which he wished to speak involved the interests of Squire Egan, or he would not “make so bowld.”

This altered the matter; and Father Phil desired Andy to follow him to the farm-house of John Dwyer, where he would speak to him after he had breakfasted.