All Irish
women have a dread of striopachas. It's the only thing that
frights them; I manes the wild Irish, for as for the quality women
I have heard they are no bit better than the English. Come, yere
hanner, let's talk of something else."
"You were saying now that you were thinking of leaving off fortune-
telling and buying things of servants. Do you mean to depend upon
your needles alone?"
"No; I am thinking of leaving off tramping altogether and going to
the Tir na Siar."
"Isn't that America?"
"It is, yere hanner; the land of the west is America."
"A long way for a lone girl."
"I should not be alone, yere hanner; I should be wid my uncle
Tourlough and his wife."
"Are they going to America?"
"They are, yere hanner; they intends leaving off business and going
to America next spring."
"It will cost money."
"It will, yere hanner; but they have got money, and so have I."
"Is it because business is slack that you are thinking of going to
America?"
"Oh no, yere hanner; we wish to go there in order to get rid of old
ways and habits, amongst which are fortune-telling and buying
things of sarvants, which yere hanner was jist now checking me
wid."
"And can't you get rid of them here?"
"We cannot, yere hanner. If we stay here we must go on tramping,
and it is well known that doing them things is part of tramping."
"And what would you do in America?"
"Oh, we could do plenty of things in America - most likely we
should buy a piece of land and settle down."
"How came you to see the wickedness of the tramping life?"
"By hearing a great many sarmons and preachings and having often
had the Bible read to us by holy women who came to our tent."
"Of what religion do you call yourselves now?"
"I don't know, yere hanner; we are clane unsettled about religion.
We were once Catholics and carried Saint Colman of Cloyne about wid
us in a box; but after hearing a sermon at a church about images,
we went home, took the saint out of his box and cast him into a
river."
"Oh it will never do to belong to the Popish religion, a religion
which upholds idol-worship and persecutes the Bible - you should
belong to the Church of England."
"Well, perhaps we should, yere hanner, if its ministers were not
such proud violent men. Oh, you little know how they look down
upon all poor people, especially on us tramps. Once my poor aunt,
Tourlough's wife, who has always had stronger conviction than any
of us, followed one of them home after he had been preaching, and
begged him to give her God, and was told by him that she was a
thief, and if she didn't take herself out of the house he would
kick her out."
"Perhaps, after all," said I; "you had better join the Methodists -
I should say that their ways would suit you better than those of
any other denomination of Christians."
Yere hanner knows nothing about them, otherwise ye wouldn't talk in
that manner. Their ways would never do for people who want to have
done with lying and staring, and have always kept themselves clane
from striopachas. Their word is not worth a rotten straw, yere
hanner, and in every transaction which they have with people they
try to cheat and overreach - ask my uncle Tourlough, who has had
many dealings with them. But what is far worse, they do that which
the wildest calleen t'other side of Ougteraarde would be burnt
rather than do. Who can tell ye more on that point than I, yere
hanner? I have been at their chapels at nights, and have listened
to their screaming prayers, and have seen what's been going on
outside the chapels after their services, as they call them, were
over - I never saw the like going on outside Father Toban's chapel,
yere hanner! Yere hanner's hanner asked me if I ever did anything
in the way of striopachas - now I tell ye that I was never asked to
do anything in that line but by one of them folks - a great man
amongst them he was, both in the way of business and prayer, for he
was a commercial traveller during six days of the week and a
preacher on the seventh - and such a preacher. Well, one Sunday
night after he had preached a sermon an hour-and-a-half long, which
had put half a dozen women into what they call static fits, he
overtook me in a dark street and wanted me to do striopachas with
him - he didn't say striopachas, yer hanner, for he had no Irish -
but he said something in English which was the same thing."
"And what did you do?"
"Why, I asked him what he meant by making fun of a poor ugly girl -
for no one knows better than myself, yere hanner, that I am very
ugly - whereupon he told me that he was not making fun of me, for
it had long been the chief wish of his heart to commit striopachas
with a wild Irish Papist, and that he believed if he searched the
world he should find none wilder than myself."
"And what did you reply?"
"Why, I said to him, yere hanner, that I would tell the
congregation, at which he laughed and said that he wished I would,
for that the congregation would say they didn't believe me, though
at heart they would, and would like him all the better for it."
"Well, and what did you say then?"
"Nothing, at all, yere hanner; but I spat in his face and went home
and told my uncle Tourlough, who forthwith took out a knife and
began to sharp it on a whetstone, and I make no doubt would have
gone and stuck the fellow like a pig, had not my poor aunt begged
him not on her knees.
