The Fortunes Of Glencore. Lever Charles James
give us something of our own
In praise of our Land of Potatoes.
Tol lol de lol, etc.
“‘What care I for sorrows of those
Who speak of their heart as a cuore;
How expect me to feel for the woes
Of him who calls love an amore!
Let me have a few words about home,
With music whose strains I ‘d remember,
And I ‘ll give you all Florence and Rome,
Tho’ they have a blue sky in December.
Tol lol de lol, etc.
“‘With a pretty face close to your own,
I ‘m sore there’s no rayson for sighing;
Nor when walkin’ beside her alone,
Why the blazes be talking of dying!
That’s the way tho’, in France and in Spain,
Where love is not real, but acted,
You must always portend you ‘re insane,
Or at laste that you ‘re partly distracted.
Tol lol de lol, etc.’”
It is very unlikely that the reader will estimate Billy’s impromptu as did the company; in fact, it possessed the greatest of all claims to their admiration, for it was partly incomprehensible, and by the artful introduction of a word here and there, of which his hearers knew nothing, the poet was well aware that he was securing their heartiest approval. Nor was Billy insensible to such flatteries. The irritabile genus has its soft side, and can enjoy to the uttermost its own successes. It is possible, if Billy had been in another sphere, with much higher gifts, and surrounded by higher associates, that he might have accepted the homage tendered him with more graceful modesty, and seemed at least less confident of his own merits; but under no possible change of places or people could the praise have bestowed more sincere pleasure.
“You’re right, there, Jim Morris,” said he, turning suddenly round towards one of the company; “you never said a truer thing than that. The poetic temperament is riches to a poor man. Wherever I go – in all weathers, wet and dreary, and maybe footsore, with the bags full, and the mountain streams all flowin’ over – I can just go into my own mind, just the way you’d go into an inn, and order whatever you wanted. I don’t need to be a king, to sit on a throne; I don’t want ships, nor coaches, nor horses, to convay me to foreign lands. I can bestow kingdoms. When I haven’t tuppence to buy tobacco, and without a shoe to my foot, and my hair through my hat, I can be dancin’ wid princesses, and handin’ empresses in to tay.”
“Musha, musha!” muttered the surrounders, as though they were listening to a magician, who in a moment of unguarded familiarity condescended to discuss his own miraculous gifts.
“And,” resumed Billy, “it isn’t only what ye are to yourself and your own heart, but what ye are to others, that without that sacret bond between you, wouldn’t think of you at all. I remember, once on a time, I was in the north of England travelling, partly for pleasure, and partly with a view to a small speculation in Sheffield ware – cheap penknives and scissors, pencil-cases, bodkins, and the like – and I wandered about for weeks through what they call the Lake Country, a very handsome place, but nowise grand or sublime, like what we have here in Ireland – more wood, forest timber, and better-off people, but nothing beyond that!
“Well, one evening – it was in August – I came down by a narrow path to the side of a lake, where there was a stone seat, put up to see the view from, and in front was three wooden steps of stairs going down into the water, where a boat might come in. It was a lovely spot, and well chosen, for you could count as many as five promontories running out into the lake; and there was two islands, all wooded to the water’s edge; and behind all, in the distance, was a great mountain, with clouds on the top; and it was just the season when the trees is beginnin’ to change their colors, and there was shades of deep gold, and dark olive, and russet brown, all mingling together with the green, and glowing in the lake below under the setting sun, and all was quiet and still as midnight; and over the water the only ripple was the track of a water-hen, as she scudded past between the islands; and if ever there was peace and tranquillity in the world it was just there! Well, I put down my pack in the leaves, for I did n’t like to see or think of it, and I stretched myself down at the water’s edge, and I fell into a fit of musing. It’s often and often I tried to remember the elegant fancies that came through my head, and the beautiful things that I thought I saw that night out on the lake fornint me! Ye see I was fresh and fastin’; I never tasted a bit the whole day, and my brain, maybe, was all the better; for somehow janius, real janius, thrives best on a little starvation. And from musing I fell off asleep; and it was the sound of voices near that first awoke me! For a minute or two I believed I was dreaming, the words came so softly to my ear, for they were spoken in a low, gentle voice, and blended in with the slight splash of oars that moved through the water carefully, as though not to lose a word of him that was speakin’.
“It’s clean beyond me to tell you what he said; and, maybe, if I could, ye would n’t be able to follow it, for he was discoorsin’ about night and the moon, and all that various poets said about them; ye’d think that he had books, and was reading out of them, so glibly came the verses from his lips. I never listened to such a voice before, so soft, so sweet, so musical, and the words came droppin’ down, like the clear water filterin’ over a rocky ledge, and glitterin’ like little spangles over moss and wild-flowers.
“It wasn’t only in English but Scotch ballads, too, and once or twice in Italian that he recited, till at last he gave out, in all the fulness of his liquid voice, them elegant lines out of Pope’s Homer: —
“‘As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night,
O’er heaven’s clear azure spreads her sacred light,
When not a breath disturbs the deep serene,
And not a cloud o’ercasts the solemn scene,
Around her throne the vivid planets roll,
And stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole:
O’er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed,
And top with silver every mountain’s head;
Then shine the vales; the rocks in prospect rise —
A flood of glory bursts from all the skies;
The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight,
Eye the blue vault and bless the useful light.’
“The Lord forgive me, but when he came to the last words and said, ‘useful light,’ I couldn’t restrain myself, but broke out, ‘That’s mighty like a bull, anyhow, and reminds me of the ould song, —
“‘Good luck to the moon, she’s a fine noble creature,
And gives us the daylight all night in the dark.’
“Before I knew where I was, the boat glided in to the steps, and a tall man, a little stooped in the shoulders, stood before me.
“‘Is it you,’ said he, with a quiet laugh, ‘that accuses Pope of a bull?’
“‘It is,’ says I; ‘and, what’s more, there isn’t a poet from Horace downwards that I won’t show bulls in; there’s bulls in Shakspeare and in Milton; there’s bulls in the ancients; I ‘ll point out a bull in Aristophanes.’
“‘What have we here?’ said he, turning to the others.
“‘A poor crayture,’ says I, ‘like Goldsmith’s chest of drawers, —
“‘With brains reduced a doable debt to pay, To dream by night, sell Sheffield ware by day.’
“Well, with that he took a fit of laughing, and handing the