The real truth about Irish humor as a thing to itself and apart is that it is based either on ignorance or on a certain slowness of mind. The Dublin car driver who on being told by a constable that his name was obliterated from his car replied, “Arrah, me name’s not Oblitherated, it’s O’Grady,” no doubt achieved what will pass among the average for humor. All the same, he did not know that he was saying anything good, and his mot, if mot one may call it, was the direct outcome of a profound ignorance of the English language. The books of Irish humor abound with instances of this form of humorsomeness: “You are not opaque, are you?” sarcastically asked one Irishman of another who was standing in front of him[142] at the theater. “Indeed I’m not,” replied the other, “it’s O’Brien that I am.” Clearly one might manufacture this kind of humor ad infinitum. The Chinese are said to consider it a great joke if a man should fall down and break his arm, and I have seen Englishmen laughing at a man who has been unfortunate enough to have his hat blown off in a high wind. But the Irish do not laugh at these things. Even the native bull, of which they are so proud, fails to tickle them. The Irishman says his bull solemnly and unconsciously, and the Englishman does the laughing. In essence the Irish bull is really a blunder. Nuttall, with his usual charming frankness, defines a bull as “a ludicrous inconsistency, or blunder in speech.” Children and Irishmen are always making them: “If it please the coort,” quoth an Irish attorney, “if I am wrong in this, I have another pint which is equally conclusive.” An Irish reporter, giving an account of a burglary, remarked: “After a fruitless[143] search, all the money was recovered, except one pair of boots!” A Dublin clerk on being asked why he was a quarter of an hour late at the office, made answer: “The tram-car I came by was full, so I had to walk.” “This is the seventh night you’ve come home in the morning,” observed an Irish lady to her spouse, “the next time you go out, you’ll stay at home and open the door for yourself.” The following advertisement is said to have appeared in a Dublin newspaper: “Whereas John Hall has fraudulently taken away several articles of wearing apparel, without my knowledge, this is to inform him that if he does not forthwith return the same his name shall be made public.” An Irishman who accidentally came across another Irishman who had failed to meet him after a challenge addressed him in these words: “Well, sir, I met you this morning and you did not turn up; however I am determined to meet you to-morrow morning, whether you come or not.”[144] “Dhrunk!” said a man, speaking of his neighbor, “he was that dhrunk that he made ten halves of ivry word.” A man who was employed as a hod-carrier was told that he must always carry up fourteen bricks in his hod. One morning the supply of bricks ran short, and the man could find but thirteen to put in his hod. In answer to a loud yell from the street one of the masons on top of the scaffolding called out: “What do you want?” “T’row me down wan brick,” bawled Pat, pointing to his hod, “to make me number good.”

Of course, the great and abiding glory of Ireland in the way of bull-makers was the never-to-be-forgotten Sir Boyle Roche. This worthy knight once charged a political opponent with being “an enemy to both kingdoms who wishes to diminish the brotherly affection of the two sister countries.” He also said that “a man differs from a bird in not being able to be in two places at once,” and that “the Irish people were living[145] from hand to mouth, like the birds of the air.” A petition of the citizens of Belfast in favor of Catholic emancipation he stigmatized as “an airy fabric based upon a sandy foundation,” and he expressed his willingness “to give up, not only a part, but, if necessary, even the whole of our constitution to preserve the remainder.” In one of his most famous speeches there occurs the appended passage: “Mr. Speaker, if we once permitted the villainous French Masons to meddle with the buttresses and walls of our ancient constitution, they would never stop, nor stay, sir, until they brought the foundation stones tumbling down about the ears of the nation. If these Gallican villains should invade us, ’tis on that table maybe those honorable members might see their own destinies lying in heaps atop of one another. Here, perhaps, sir, the murderous crew would break in and cut us to pieces, and throw our bleeding heads upon that table to stare us in the face.”

[146]

“Is your father alive yet............