 | Mark Twain's sketches, new and old |  |
“PARTY CRIES” IN IRELAND.
BELFAST is a peculiarly religious
community. This may be
said of the whole of the north
of Ireland. About one half of the
people are Protestants and the other
half Catholics. Each party does all
it can to make its own doctrines popular
and draw the affections of the
irreligious toward them. One hears
constantly of the most touching instances
of this zeal. A week ago a
vast concourse of Catholics assembled at Armagh to dedicate a new Cathedral;
and when they started home again the roadways were lined with groups of
was marked with blood. I thought that only Catholics argued in that way, but
it seems to be a mistake.
Every man in the community is a missionary and carries a brick to admonish
the erring with. The law has tried to break this up, but not with perfect
success. It has decreed that irritating “party cries” shall not be indulged in,
and that persons uttering them shall be fined forty shillings and costs. And so,
in the police court reports, every day, one sees these fines recorded. Last week
a girl twelve years old was fined the usual forty shillings and costs for proclaiming
in the public streets that she was “a Protestant.” The usual cry is,
“To hell with the Pope!” or “To hell with the Protestants!” according to the
utterer's system of salvation.
One of Belfast's local jokes was very good. It referred to the uniform and
inevitable fine of forty shillings and costs for uttering a party cry—and it is no
economical fine for a poor man, either, by the way. They say that a policeman
found a drunken man lying on the ground, up a dark alley, entertaining himself
with shouting, “To hell with!” “To hell with!” The officer smelt a fine
—informers get half:
“What's that you say?”
“To hell with!”
“To hell with who? To hell with what?”
“Ah, bedad ye can finish it yourself—it's too expinsive for me!”
I think the seditious disposition, restrained by the economical instinct is
finely put, in that.
| Mark Twain's sketches, new and old | |