1

round this sacred spot and one dropping | in, and to produce a certain note. Many a stone each time they completed a circle. of the peasantry can only speak Irish, a Afterwards they knelt down for a few language quite distinct in itself and utterly minutes and then departed. These holy unintelligible to my English ears, to which wells are about a foot deep, and enclosed it sounds like German, being rather gut. by stones. They only contain a very little tural. Those who know English speak it water left by the last rainfall. very correctly, and do not drop their aspirates as the lower classes in England do. Both men and women smoke and chew tobacco.

In these parts there still exists the old pillion fashion of riding. When a fair is being held anywhere, one always meets several couples on horseback, the woman sitting sideways and holding on to the man in front. Sometimes the horse or Connemara pony, a sturdy little creature, carries instead two men, or a woman and a bale of flannel which is fastened on to the straw saddle, and the husband or brother leading the animal. Once I saw a woman riding sideways by herself, and holding an umbrella up, as it was raining. She looked so peculiar. An umbrella here is a great sign of opulence.

The chief amusements of the peasantry are going to the village fairs and having dances in their cabins. The fairs are principally held in the summer, and the dances mostly in the winter. They begin about nine or ten in the evening, and keep it up to the early hours of the morning. Sunday nights are the favorite times. As they are orderly and sober, this dancing is a very harmless amusement. I have seen four of these dances, which generally take place when a piper or fiddler passes that way. The last dance but one I was at, was held in one of the smaller cabins. In this limited space there were six people jigging and five or six looking on. The piper was playing, accompanied by his son on a tin whistle, his wife hushing a baby in the corner, the eldest daughter, with her weird face and shock of red hair, peeping out near her, and three or four small children, also of the piper's family, were lying in a bed built in the wall, and being chastised every now and then for being awake! Besides this small crowd, there were two pigs under the bed, a cow 3 and two calves reposing on some dried heather or sedge, and several fowls roosting on the rafters above. The whole picturesque scene was partially shadowed, and partially lit up, by the glow from the peat fire and the dim light of a small oil lamp. Some few can do a polka, or a sort of lancers, but the most usual, and the most popular, dance is the monotonous jig. It is performed by two rows of people facing each other, and doing a kind of shuffle on alternate feet, varied by occasionally changing sides. When a couple wish to finish, they cross hands, turn each other round once or twice, and then retire. The chief merit of the jig seems to be in who can keep it up the longest for the two who are the last to stop are applauded by the on-lookers. Those who join in the dance give a penny or twopence to the piper, according to their means. A travelling musician can always depend upon the hospitality of the natives, as he jour-into suits for the men and boys by some neys from place to place.

The Irish pipes differ in construction from the Scotch pipes, and when the player is standing he props up on a stick his right knee, against which he presses the longest wooden tube to keep the air VOL. LXXIX. 4075

LIVING AGE.

The roads are remarkably good, and also remarkably hard, as those who have fallen can testify. Their only fault is their want of width, which scarcely allows two cars to pass abreast. As it is, a driver has sometimes to turn one of the side seats up. Cows, donkeys, sheep, pigs, ducks, geese, and fowls wander along the highways at their own sweet will, and are so tame that if anybody or anything is coming by they move out of the way in the most leisurely manner, and the pigs almost sneer at you as you pass for not knowing better than thus to disturb your betters, the backbone of Ireland.

As timber is so scarce, walls take the place of palings and fences. They are built of large, flat stones quarried from the mountains, and piled up to the height required, but only sometimes is cement used to fasten the stones together. It is much more usual to see ferns and moss growing between the crevices.

Living long distances from towns and villages, the people are greatly dependent on their own exertions. They build their own cabins, shear their own sheep, card, spin, and dye the wool, which when spun they send away to be woven into flannel or thick frieze. The latter is made up

so-called tailor in a village or town. The women generally make their own and their children's clothes. They obtain a brown dye by boiling down a certain white-looking lichen or moss, which grows on the rocks. A yellow hue they get from a par

ticular heather, but the scarlet colors they | to suppress outrages. It is much to be

have to buy. The women, most of whom regretted that all the priests in Ireland do are barefooted, wear chiefly short red not use their power with equal discretion. skirts, dark, nondescript bodices, and scar- A Protestant myself, and with little liking let or brown checked shawls over their for the generality of those who represent heads and shoulders, and a few have white religion, be they Ranter, Canter, or Cathshawls looking more like blankets. Some- olic, still I must have been fortunate times they draw their skirts up over their enough in my acquaintance with the Irish heads instead. Many of the old women | priesthood, for the only one I know is a look very nice and neat in their close- very peaceable, broad-minded, well-read, fitting white caps or mutches tied under well-informed, clever man. I almost think the chin. The children's dresses are of he would renounce Home Rule if he saw rough white flannel. They go about with out any hats, stockings, or shoes. The men and boys are generally shod, and can sometimes boast of socks. On Sundays several clean white collars are to be seen.

the assembling together of the representatives of his country. All the forty-four years of his life he has never been to England, so he has still to look forward to one day seeing the Zoological Gardens, the House of Commons, the pantomimes and all the other great sights of London.

Almost all are strict Roman Catholics, and attend chapel very regularly, great My priestly friend attributes the Irish distances being no excuse. The sermons agitations to secret societies going are preached in Irish. Each parish is amongst the people, and working on the under two priests. The parish I was in feelings of the ignorant. And yet, at the embraces an area of fifty-nine thousand same time, he acknowledges that the acres, though, of course, this includes un- Roman Catholic Church has paramount inhabited mountains. Still the work must power. If so, it is able to, and ought to, be very hard, having often to go miles in counteract the evil influences of these sothe wind, rain, and cold at winter time. cieties. Otherwise, we can come to but Both the priests here are teetotallers for one of two conclusions: if secret societies the sake of example, and not bigoted tee- exist and flourish under the very eyes, and totallers either, for I saw one pour some with the knowledge of, the Church, then whiskey into a bottle to take to a sick the Church must either be for them, though parishioner. The education of the chil-it be only passively, or the secret societies dren is under the supervision of the priests, though the school nearest here was built by an English Protestant landlord. Notwithstanding the great distances some of the pupils have to go, and the continual rains, the attendance is very regular. The children from this neighborhood have to walk ten miles a day to be taught. They have all the advantages of a good elementary education, which the parents could never have had, as they are very ignorant and superstitious.

The School Board not having yet extended its benign influence over these parts, the poor pupils do not enjoy the privileges of learning French, music, etc., so I shudder to think what incompetent servants, mechanics, and tradesmen they will make in the future without these ac complishments! The only power that can enforce regular attendance here is the power of the priest's tongue, which power the present priests of this parish use rightly on the side of law and order; and though one of them I know advocates Home Rule, still he always denounces from the altar the slightest transgression of the law, and in his former curé, during the last disturbances, used all his influence

possess, after all, the greater power, and defy priests and purgatory together. An Irish landlord told me himself that on one occasion two priests threatened his life because he would not vote with them on some local matter. This must have been an encouraging example to the "moonlighters." Fortunately, the head priest and curate of this parish are quite a different stamp of men, and would be the first to condemn violence of word, thought, or deed.

However, to return from priest to peasant. Both men and women work in the field, the former earning 7s. 6d. a week, and the latter 5s. a week. Although this is less than an English laborer would get, still they do not work so well or so quickly, and require constant supervision. Sometimes the landlords take the rents out in work, instead of in money. Besides field labor, the peasantry are employed as herds to look after the cattle, sheep, and goats on the mountains, or to fish for their masters or do anything else that is required of them. Those who fish on their own account can, with ordinary luck, make enough money from the result of their hauls, which they sell at the principal villages, to keep

them all the winter. But more profitable | remarks about the people, judging from to the people than any fish or bird that my own observations of those of this they ever catch, is that pretentious pouter neighborhood. I like the people, though pigeon, the tourist, who is plucked and I must say they are improvident, thriftsold with great success during the summer months.

worth living, and then went on to ask, rather hazily, whether there was anything like it in the past. So a new school of historians rose up, whose teachers began to investigate the origin, growth, and development of our institutions; and one of them, John Richard Green, struck out a line of his own when he began and brought to completion that work of real genius and original research, the "Short History of the English People."

ing parish papers, bailiff's accounts, and
other such lumber, and the older they are
the happier he is to meet with them and
transcribe them. It is a very curious
and wholly irrepressible and incurable
monomania; but, I grieve to say
- for by
my confession I shall be sure to incur
the ridicule and scornful pity of my fel-
low-creatures- I grieve to say that I am
one who suffers from this form of mad-

ness.

a great deal better-of the thirteenth, or sometimes even of the twelfth, I am a happy man, and I copy patiently on, and the result is - virtue rewarded.

When a man strikes out a new idea he When I am too weary to sleep, or to may have reason to complain that others read, or to talk, or to think, or to listen, I appropriate it and claim it as their own, but | have, for many years past, found a soothhe certainly will not be able to keep it to ing and healthful recreation in simply himself. The good seed with a living germ copying something which has never been in it is sure to spring up he knoweth not printed and is never likely to be, somehow. And so it has come to pass that the thing which not everybody can read, and people have become curious to know how very few would care to read, if they could the people lived in ages past, and feel only make it out. I "draw the line somea languid interest in the exploits of kings where." I draw the line for the most part and great captains, or armies and navies, at the fifteenth century. Everything that and champions and conquerors. There is comes to my hands before that time I a voice which is calling out from the hearts fasten upon and set to work at; but when of the very ordinary folk inhabiting these a document is less than five hundred years islands, and which seems to be saying to old it is a little too modern for my taste. those who know, "Tell us something about But when I get a roll, or even a conveyourselves in the past by telling us how ance, of the fourteenth century, or better such as we lived, and thought, and strug gled in the old days." It is not easy to supply the demand for this sort of information which has arisen of late among us. In the first place, we have to begin by Lest the reader should do me the injuscombating the immense mass of gratuitous tice of supposing that this kind of emassumptions and contemptuous prejudices ployment is the business of my life, I which have held the field so long; we must needs inform him that I spend only have to prove that a great deal that we my leisure moments in this foolish diverlearnt of our accredited teachers was sion. It is the amusement of my odd wrong, and to attempt to gain confidence minutes and odd half-hours; but I am in our own conclusions by showing that sometimes amazed at myself when I see such as were before us were by no means how my collection of miscellaneous traninfallible, and sometimes committed them- scripts has grown. Nevertheless, it is a selves to quite untenable theories. Of subject of constant regret, and of no little course, when men venture upon this line perplexity, to observe how very rarely I they are sure to appear presumptuous, come upon any documents which throw and something more. But that is not all. light upon the daily life and social status The saying, "Blessed is the land that has of the country clergy during this early no history," is a very pregnant saying, time. My lamented friend, Mr. Cadaverand part of its meaning is that when peo- ous, used to say that we know quite as ple lead a quiet and prosperous life, with- much about them as was good for us; but out much ambition and without great this was one of his contradictious sayings, calamities or violent changes, the records and of a piece with another saying of his of their lives and proceedings are apt to that the English clergy and the English appear dull and uninteresting to those monasteries were deteriorated and corthat come after, and so they are often rupted by the rise of the universities, and without compunction consigned to the by the fashion of young men seeking that dust-bin, the rag-bag, or the flames. Only sort of learning abroad which they could here and there does an eccentric nonde- have found just as well, or better, at script, with a bee in his bonnet, find him- home, and that the clergy ceased to be self possessed by a mania for scrutinizing interesting by reason of their being overthe most useless documents that come in governed, and cowed, and snubbed by the his way, and employ himself in decipher- bishops and other overbearing function

le

to

aries, when the academics begin to lift up their heads on high and to walk with a proud look. This odd position of his he would take up with some vehemence at times, but I noticed that, like many other dogmatists, he was wont to support it less by evidence adduced than by unhesitating assertion. Peace be with him! I intend to publish the cream of his note-book some day. When they appear the world will know that there has been a prophet among them.

curious and minute information regarding the rector's way of life, habits, social status, and other matters, such as could only be gleaned from such a source as this. If we have now and then to read between the lines and draw our inferences from slight indications, this is only what we are always compelled to do in studying the past. For the past must be studied, or it can never be known.

I hesitated at first where I should begin - but after consideration it seems to me best to say a word about the house in which this worthy clergyman lived, and to show my readers what sort of a house it was. In that part of Norfolk where Harpley is situated, stone is scarce and dear; the making of bricks was an art which had almost perished among us, and even if it had existed hereabouts, brick earth, such as our ancestors would have thought it worth their while to bake into bricks, was not to be found. Moreover, the rights of the homagers of every manor to "turbary" and collecting of furze, and lopping and topping of trees growing in certain parts of the manor -- that is, the right of providing themselves with fuel in

Among the many old manuscripts which I have copied verbatim and literatim, one of the most curious and precious is what we should now call a balance sheet, or account of receipts and expenditure of a certain bailiff, or clerk, or managing man, who was in the employment of the Rev. John de Gurnay, rector of Harpley, in the county of Norfolk, for the year ending Michaelmas, 1306. Harpley is about seven or eight miles from Sandringham, two from Houghton, and twelve from Lynn. Here the Gurnays had a house of some pretension as early as the reign of Henry the Second, and I dare say even earlier, and they were the lords of a small manor, which was called after them Gur-one form or another - was very jealously nay's Manor.

My friend the Rev. John was almost certainly the son of a certain Sir John de Gurnay, and almost as certainly a younger son, or he would not have taken holy orders and accepted the family living as he did, apparently before the reign of Edward the First was much more than half over. Now, it came to pass that his elder brother died leaving no issue, and, for anything that appears to the contrary, unmarried, and the Rev. John succeeded to the family estates, which were not inconsiderable, and for the most part lying about in three or four parishes in the neighborhood. Bailiffs' accounts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are to be met with by the thousand all over England; they are not very exciting reading they are, in fact, caviare to the general. I have handled many hundreds of them, I have copied or analyzed many scores; but accounts of so early a date as this one that lies before me are at least comparatively rare; and of anything like a balance sheet rendered to a country clergyman by bis factor during the reign of Edward the First, I have never yet met with or heard of an example, except this one that lies before me.

watched, and whereas in Harpley there were two or three manors whose territories overlapped or ran into one another, the attempt to appropriate any large portion of the common stock of fuel for the purpose of burning brick would have been resented with great indignation, and something like a rebellion; certainly a succes sion of ugly riots would have been the inevitable result of such an invasion of the common rights of the inhabitants. On the other hand, there was a great deal more timber grown and standing all over the island, and especially over Norfolk, than is now to be found, and much more importance was attached to the woods of a manor than some good people are inclined to suppose. Timber was by far the most important building material used in East Anglia. But it was not the only one. The dwellings of the working classes were made almost exclusively of what we call "clay lump" in our part of the world; but the houses of the gentry and well-to-do were either constructed wholly of timber, or more frequently they were built, partly of timber and partly of clay lump, as the old stud-work houses were built, of which some very interesting specimens may still be found in Cheshire and Shropshire, and, in fact, everywhere It will be seen that this unique docu- where timber was comparatively plentiful ment furnishes us with a great deal of very | and stone was costly or scarce.