Chapter V: Part I: The Lovers

A group of peasants were straggling along the hilly road returning from the fair in the summer twilight. It was composed of about an equal number of men and women; the women trudged along on their naked feet, with their heavy market-baskets over one arm, and their boots slung by the laces over the other; the men lazily dragged their heavily shod feet after them, with the trailing gait born of much walking in ploughed fields and clinging soil, they carried one hand in their trousers' pocket, the other twirling an ash plant, with which they switched off the heads of all the thistles they met.

In front of them wandered a few young bullocks, badly bred and unkempt, mooing pitifully from time to time. In their midst was a donkey-cart with four sheep and a couple of pigs confined between its cribs; the sheep were tied together in pairs with twisted hay-bands round their necks, their legs also were hobbled with hay-bands; the pigs ran about loose and routed ceaselessly among the straw at the bottom of the cart. The donkey plodded patiently along by himself, for the most part unnoticed; but when it was necessary to turn aside into a by-road or avoid one of the huge stones that had tumbled off a neighboring ditch, one of the men guided him by the simple but effective means of seizing the tail-pieces and levering round both cart and staggering donkey together.

'A bad fair agin the day,' said one of the elder men in a high querulous tone, directed impartially to the group at large.

'Ay, deed so,' replied another, 'times is main bad the now. Bastes is gone clane to nothin'; two pun I was bid the day for a year-ould heifer; that's her runnin' in front wi' the white patch 'roun' her tail; I min' the time when I wouldn't have luked at sivin for her; two pun, min' that now,' and he spat disgustedly. 'Pigs is the on'y thing as fetches any price at ahl, an' who's to be at the cost of fattenin' thim?'

'Michael Dolan wudn't be overly well plazed at yon sight,' interjected the first speaker, jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the hindmost of the group.

The couple thus alluded to were the youngest of those present. They were in the stage known as 'coortin',' and ever since leaving town some half hour before they had been unobtrusively dropping in the rear of their party. They were walking along with their arms round each other's waists, and her head drooped upon his shoulder. Contrary to the rule among the Northern peasantry, who are for the most part hard-featured and uncomely, perhaps owing to the admixture of Scotch blood in their veins, the girl had the true Celtic type of beauty, straight features with black hair, and large blue eyes fringed with dark lashes, a tall figure, and a firm and well-developed bust. But the young man beside her overtopped her by a head, straight-limbed, with a broad sun-tanned face and a wide laughing mouth; the damp of the plough-land had not yet got into his bones nor the bend of the scythe into his knee-joints. They walked in silence, content to be together; your rustic has not too many words to spare to waste any even in his courting. But the blood coursed none the less hotly in the veins of both.

The rich, who have more room in their houses, and fewer constraints to trouble them, do most of their love-making indoors. The poor have to do theirs in the open air, chiefly, as now, in the long evenings coming home together from market. The middle classes are more restricted by space and convention on both these sides, which perhaps partly accounts for their higher morality.

An Irish laborer's cottage of two rooms has to accommodate a whole family, the younger children often sleeping in the same bed with their parents. From thus herding together, and from the necessities of country life in connection with animals, the children are brought up in familiarity with aspects of life which never come under the notice of those bred in towns. And yet the Irish women have a high reputation for chastity; and justly, for they rarely take a lover outside of their own class. Within that class they are protected by their religion; if anything goes wrong between a man and a maid, the priest always hears of it, and marries them on the spot before worse can happen. Generations of this restraint have bred an ingrained habit of continence among the people, so that now in the Roman Catholic districts of Northern Ireland an illegitimate child is an almost unknown disgrace.

'What did ye buy in town the day, Paddy?' asked the girl, with the intonation of a tender speech. The limits of her vocabulary did not admit of a nearer approach to lovers' talk than the practical details of housekeeping that bore on their projected marriage.

'Them two pigs in the ass-cart, an' the Saints alone knows whether I'll be fit to kape thim through the winter. A shillin' a day, an' not ivery day at that, isn't enough to kape a man, let alone a wife an' two suckin' pigs. I only git two shillin' when I'm ploughin' or mowin', an' them machines is cuttin' us all out; they git all the wurruk these times. I'm thinkin' I'll jine to larn the use av them be next year; there's no man hereabouts as knows the thrick av it, an' I've a consate that siveral av the farmers would jine an' buy a mowin' machine right out instead av hirin' them thramp wans, av they had a man as cud use it.'

'But yous is the boy as has the head,' said the girl admiringly. 'I'm glad I'm to be married to yous. I'll niver want for bit nor sup, I'll hold ye.'

'It's that same that's botherin' me this minit, Norah darlin'. Whin are we to be married? It ud be ahl right wi' the house an' the wee bit farrum; but me brother Mick is that set agin you I don't know what's kim over him. An' I'd as lave not ang-er him. For Mick's right fond av me the whole time, whin ahl's said an' done.'

'Ay, troth is he; he thinks the sun rises an' sets an yer elbow whin yous is not by.'

'I'm clane moidhered what to do. What did you buy, swateheart?'

'I'm worse agin nor yous. I on'y got five shillin' for spriggin' an' stockins as tuk me a fair fortnight. But I scraped enough ha'pence together for a churn; an' I said as how yous wud bring it home the nixt time ye had the ass-cart in town.'

In these marriages it is the woman's part, where possible, to supply the household utensils necessary to set up house together, the man's to find the live-stock and keep a roof over their heads by his labor.

'It's comin' on saft, let's take shelther,' said Paddy presently.

'Ah, what signifies that dhrap? It'll on'y be a shower.'

'An' yous in yer new jacket an' hat wi' the red feather till it; it'll be ahl shpoilt. As it isn't goin' to last, it's ahl the more raison not to git wet to the pelt for nothin'. Let's git in behin' this ould wall for a wee taste; it's gran' shelther, an' the brackens right saft to set an.'

The girl resisted for a time, but finally, when she felt a large drop splash on her nose, her fears for her finery triumphed over her native modesty, and she let herself be persuaded against her will. Paddy calmly 'tossed' the loose stone wall, making a gap of a height sufficient to let her pass over it, and they took refuge under the ruined gable of an old church beside the road. The bracken grew thickly up to the foot of the crumbling wall; the overhanging ivy cast them into deep shadow.

'Ah, quit,' exclaimed the girl presently, in a tone half-angry, half-alarmed. 'Quit now, I'm tellin' ye. What for are ye squeezin' me so tight? For the love av Mary, Paddy darlin,' what are ye doin'? I didn't think it av ye,' and her voice died away in a murmur of passion.

When the shower was over, they rose and resumed their journey in silence, walking apart, one on the grass on either side, with the roadway between them.

When they had thus travelled a mile, the girl said timidly,--

'Pathrick.'

'Ay.'

'It's my turn to confess to Father Brady come Sunday.'

For another five minutes there was a silence, then the man said shamefacedly,--

'Norah.'

'Ay.'

'There's no call to say nothin' to the praste about yon. I'll tell him to call us for the first time in chapel on Sunday. Come an' giv us a kiss, darlin', an' make frinds agin. Troth it's all wan, whin we jine to be married so soon.'