Part 2

A quack doctor in a huge caravan drawn by four horses, appeared next, and apparently with much profitable practice, among the dupes who crowded about him to read his puffs and buy his physic. A pedlar in another part of the _place_ where the crowd was considerable, without coat or waistcoat (the wind was at north-east), and labouring very hard with his hands and lungs, was disposing of coloured cotton handkerchiefs by a sort of auction form. He took a piece from a lot of the same pattern, tied it round his waist or on his head as an indication that the handkerchiefs he was about to put up for sale were of the same sort, and then named a price, lowering the amount, perhaps, from twenty to fourteen sous, until he heard such an amount bid as satisfied him; then with the rapidity of a conjuror he flung the article to the bidder. Another and another purchaser followed as fast as he could unfold and throw the handkerchiefs at their faces, stopping occasionally for a few seconds to receive payments from many customers; then he opened a fresh lot, and thus perpetually exhibited varieties, selling all the time at a rate of rapidity which I had never seen equalled, and which could only occur where every individual in the little crowd is strictly honest.

Little bags of silver and copper were, in the open booths, carelessly slipped into unlocked boxes, from which any clever rogue might easily have helped himself; but such an occurrence is almost unknown in the provincial parts of France. These latter exhibitions were certainly neither English nor Irish.

It would afford no interest to any of my readers to inform them of the number of horses which I purchased, nor of the prices which I paid, nor of the arrangements which I made for sending them to Liverpool. It is enough to tell them that out of the many strings of horses which had been conducted to the fair in the English way by ropes from the head to the tail, and the tail to the head, in succession, and were now drawn up in rank and file under the shade of a wall for inspection, I bought some of those which were most free from the characteristic defects of the Norman horses, and had them safely stabled.

I returned to the scene of gaiety and confusion. There was a young woman there, bare-headed, but decently dressed in the main, playing upon a violin, while her male partner blew a terrible blast upon a bugle at intervals, at the conclusion of each, announcing a grand spectacle for the evening. The female had given a finishing scrape, and in a moment was on the ground, flat upon her back, but fortunately without injury to herself or her fiddle. I looked about and perceived the cause of the disaster: a horse had been pressed forward very rudely through the crowd, with a calf dangling from each of his sides, and one of these coming into violent contact with the fair musician, had thrown her down.

The mode by which those wretched animals had been conveyed to the fair was truly horrible. The four legs of each being bound, a rope connecting the poor creatures together by their tortured limbs was passed over the back of the horse, keeping them _in equilibrio_, and with the heads hanging downwards in agony, while the ligatures confining the legs by which they were suspended were impressed, by the weight of the body below, into the very bone! Oh, for a Humane Society in France to prevent such monstrous cruelty, taking for their motto the sentiment of her own Montaigne: “even theology enjoins kindness to brute animals; and considering that the same Master has given us our dwelling-place with them, and that they like ourselves are of his family, we should have a _fellow feeling_ for them!”

Attracted by a concourse of children in another spot, I soon found myself standing close to an old woman who was dealing out small thin cakes in a curious kind of manner. Before her was placed what appeared to be a small round table, but with an index, which, after being set in motion by a boy, stopped suddenly, and pointed like the hand of a clock to one of twelve numbers described in a circle. The perpetual invitation was, “Play, play! twelve cakes for a halfpenny;” and the little urchins, preferring the chance of twelve cakes for a halfpenny to the certainty of perhaps only three or four from a regular vender elsewhere, came up in rapid succession and with eager eyes to the game. Joy sparkled in the countenance of the juvenile speculator if the hand pointed to a high number; disappointment lowered upon his brow if a unit or two was the number which fortune assigned to him, while the hearty laugh of the spectators increased the acrimony of his temper.

I tried my own luck, and had one cake for my share, to the unrestrained delight of the little folk.

“Cakes for a halfpenny!” said I to myself. “What a good subject for a moral reflection!”

Here we have the seeds of gambling sown at an early season in the lively soil, and the systematic culture of this baneful and vivacious principle subsequently ensures its establishment in the human heart through the length and breadth of the land; it finds its congenial bed every where, from the child of the poorest mechanic to the grey-headed gamester in the polished societies of higher life. The avaricious principle thus precociously introduced into the youthful heart among the many natural weeds which are but too ready to spring up there, has its own distinctive fruits; and though it may be urged by those who think not deeply on the effects of early impressions on the ductile mind of childhood, that the disappointment which the little gamester experiences in his play of “twelve cakes for a halfpenny” counterbalances (as a trial of temper) the evils arising on the other hand from success in his object, this defence is really untenable in its general points.

In the little party before me I saw the willing and prepared pupils of a higher order of play--of rouge-et-noir, and hazard, and ecarté--by which so many of our own countrymen are infatuated, and sometimes ruined, when they take up their residence in France, heedless of the value of that time and those opportunities for the right use of which they are responsible to the bountiful Giver of them.

We now entered a low kind of café, in which the next scene of the serious drama of “twelve cakes for a sous” was exhibited. In one room was a billiard-table, at which two common-looking fellows were playing, at the rate of threepence an hour for the tables, for a cup of coffee and a glass of brandy. In a corner sat a bloated, half-drunken looking old man in a blouse and nightcap, while his bustling wife discharged all the labours of the establishment.

In walked a burly-looking customer, who ordered a glass of brandy for himself, and another for the landlord Nicole. Immediately afterwards--and this was a daily practice with old Nicole--a game of cards was proposed, which terminated in favour of the customer, who walked off scot free.

In several instances the old man played in this way--double or quits with his customers--for the amount of coffee, wine, cider, or brandy, consumed in his company (he himself copiously partaking of all), and no one seemed without some play for it, to pay for what he had ordered. At several tables there were many parties playing in this way at different rates; and certainly if some of them had seen the contortions of their faces in a mirror, they would have been disgusted with a vice which so agitates the human frame, and unfits for every wise and rational pursuit.

Having only played “spoil-five” and “five-and-forty” in my youth, I neither understood nor wished to learn the game which was played around me. My young friend and I went to our hotel, and there found the chambermaid and the waiter, while they were awaiting our arrival, playing ecarté together on the dinner table for the amount of their morning’s gratuities. “Twelve cakes for a halfpenny!” said I to myself again.

It only remains for me to tell how I got back to England.

I had reached Havre, by the beautiful Seine from Rouen, in the evening, without any particular adventure, and gone to an hotel kept by an Englishman, just as a waiter was cursing an unlucky boy, who had broken a wine-glass, in true English style. I heartily regretted that I had not gone to a French house, in which, if the waiter had cursed for a month in his own language, I should not have understood him.

An accident had happened to the regular steamer for London, and there appeared no chance of my getting off for three days; I was in despair, especially as my horses had preceded me from another port, and I wished to be in Liverpool contemporaneously with their arrival there.

In the course of the night I was informed that a steam-vessel had just arrived in Havre from Gibraltar, with some of the Braganza family on their way to Paris, and that she was going on to London at day-break. I tucked up my portmanteau under my arm, and my young friend and I sallied out to the part of the quay where the steamer lay, in profound darkness and the most perfect silence. “Qui vive?” said a watchman, as he put his lantern to my face and a hand upon my throat, while I was advancing to the gangboard. My companion explained; and as I had the prudence to give a franc to the watchman, he lighted us carefully to the side of the vessel.

Down we groped our way to the cabin; all was darkness there, and every one on board was asleep. The vessel was so full that the steward and his wife were lying on the floor (in a heavy slumber), and directly in my way. I spoke: no one answered. I caught the stewardess by the nose, and could not conceive what it was that I had in my hand. She screamed, and gave her husband a smart blow on the head, thinking that he was the assailant. “Pordonnez,” said I, trying to speak civilly in French, and supposing they could not understand English. “Who the deuce is there?” roared out the steward. “Oh, English,” said I to myself. I explained, and slipped a five-franc piece into the man’s hand, and apologized at the same time to his wife for having pulled her nose instead of the bell-handle.

“The captain is asleep,” said he, “but I shall awake him.” “Good fellow,” said I.

My interpreter and I followed him, and the captain, who had heard the bustle, opened his cabin door. I repeated the purport of my unseasonable visit, telling him, by way of a clincher, that the Irish Penny Journal, to which I contributed by far the best articles (“and which,” said I, “you of course take for the gratification of your passengers”), could not flourish during my absence from home.

“Come on board, both of you,” said he, “if you like, but don’t bother me with any more talk at this unseasonable hour of the night.”

“An Irishman!” thought I to myself.

He banged the door, and I suppose was instantly asleep again.

I was soon in the same condition, and did not awake until we had made considerable progress with the very next tide towards London.

[1] Mr Doyle probably means the coupée.--EDITOR.

ORIGIN AND MEANINGS OF IRISH FAMILY NAMES.

BY JOHN O’DONOVAN.

Sixth Article.

In my last article I gave examples of the process now in progress in the several provinces of Ireland among the people generally in changing their original names into names apparently English or Scottish: there are others in Ireland among the genteeler classes who have changed their old Milesian names in such a manner as to give them a French or Spanish appearance; and the adopters of these names _now_ wish to be deemed as of French or Spanish origin (any thing but Irish!) These, it is true, are few in number, but some of them are respectable; and their effort at concealing their origin is not to be recommended. We shall therefore exhibit a few instances of this mode of rendering Irish names _respectable-looking_ by giving them a foreign aspect, which the bearers cannot by any effort give their own faces. The most remarkable of these changes has been made by the family of O’Dorcy, in the west of the county of Galway, who have assumed not only the name of D’Arcy, but also the arms of the D’Arcys of England. But it is well known that the D’Arcys of Galway are all descended from James Reagh Darcy, of Galway, merchant, whose pedigree I know to be traced by Duald Mac Firbis, not to the D’Arcys of Meath, who are of Anglo-Norman origin, but to the Milesian O’Dorcys of West Connaught, who were the ancient chiefs of Partree, a well-known territory extending from the lakes of Lough Mask and Lough Carra, westwards, in the direction of Croaghpatrick.

The next instance of this kind of change which I shall adduce, is found in the adjacent county of Mayo, where a gentleman of the ancient and celebrated family of O’Malley wishes all his friends to call him not O’Malley, for that is Irish, but De Maillet; but though his friends condescend sometimes to call him by this name, they can scarcely refrain from laughter while pronouncing it, for they know very well that he descends from Owen O’Malley, the father of the famous heroine Grania Wael, and chief of Umallia or the Owles, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth.

The third instance I have met with of this false Irish vanity is in the far-famed Thomond, where a gentleman of the O’Malronies has followed the plebeian corruption of that name, by which it is metamorphosed to Moroni, by which he affects to pass as one not of Irish but of Spanish descent; but he cannot prevent his neighbours from calling him _O’Murruana_ when they speak the native language, for by a strange corruption in that part of Ireland, where the Irish language is in most other instances very correctly pronounced, when the prefix _maol_ is followed by _r_, the _l_ is itself pronounced _r_, as in the instance under consideration, and in O’Mulryan, a well-known name in Munster, which they now pronounce O’Murryan. Thus an accidental corruption in the pronunciation of a consonant is taken advantage of to metamorphose a famous old Irish name into a Spanish one. It is indeed most lamentable to see the native Irish think so little of their names and of their _own natural country_.

I have many other instances of this audacious kind of change of surnames at hand, but I refrain from enlarging on them, from the apprehension of exceeding my limits without being enabled to bring this subject to a close in the stipulated space. A few others, however, are necessary to be exhibited to public scorn. The next instance, then, which has come under my notice, is in the province of Connaught, where the family of O’Mulaville have all changed their name to Lavelle, and where those who know nothing of the history of that family are beginning to think that they are of French descent. But it is the constant tradition in the county of Mayo that they are of Danish origin, and that they have been located in Iarowle since the ninth century. Of this name was the late Editor of the Freeman’s Journal: a man of great abilities and extensive learning, who among other ancient languages had acquired a profound knowledge of his own native dialect. This name is scotticised Mac Paul in the province of Ulster.

Another name which some people are apt to take for a French or Anglo-Norman name, is Delany, as if it were De Lani; but the Irish origin of this family cannot be questioned, for the name is called O’Dulainé in the original language, and the family were originally located at the foot of Slieve Bloom in Upper Ossory. Another instance is found in the change of O’Dowling to DuLaing, but this is seldom made, and never by any but people of no consequence.

Some individuals of the name of Magunshinan, or Magilsinan, upon leaving their original localities in Cavan and Meath, have assumed, some the name of Nugent, and others that of Gilson. Of this family was Charles Gilson, the founder and endower of the public school of Old Castle, a man of great benevolence, who found it convenient on his removal to London to shorten his name to Gilson.

Other individuals of Irish name and origin, upon settling in London and other parts of England, have changed their surnames altogether, as the ancestor of the present Baron of Lower Tabley, whose name was Sir Peter Byrne, but who was obliged to change his name to Leycester, to conform to the will of his maternal grandfather, who had bequeathed him large estates in England, on condition of his dropping his Irish name and adopting that of the testator. He is the most distinguished man of the O’Byrne race now living, and we regret that his Irish origin is entirely disguised in his present name of Warren. He descends from Daniel, the second son of Loughlin Duff of Ballintlea, in the county of Wicklow, a chief of great distinction, and is related to the Byrnes of Fallybeg, near Stradbally, in the Queen’s County, who descended from the first son of this Loughlin--a fact with which his lordship is altogether unacquainted; and the writer of these remarks has often regretted that his lordship has not been made acquainted with this fact, as it might be in his power to serve the sons of the late venerable Laurence Byrne of Fallybeg.

Other changes have been made in Irish surnames by abbreviation; but though we regret this, we are not willing to condemn it altogether, especially when the changes are made for the purpose of rendering such names easy of pronunciation in the mouths of magistrates and lawyers, who could not, in many cases, bring their organs of speech to pronounce them in their original Irish form. Of these we could give a long list, but we shall content ourselves with a selection.

In the province of Connaught the name Mac Eochy has been shortened to M’Keogh, and latterly to Keogh; O’Mulconry to Conry and Conroy. In Ossory, Mac Gillapatrick has been manufactured into Fitzpatrick. In the county of Galway, and throughout the province of Connaught generally, Mac Gillakelly has been manufactured into Kilkelly; O’Mullally to Lally; Mac Gillakenny, to Kilkenny; Mac Gillamurry, to Kilmurry; Mac Gilladuff to Kilduff; Mac Geraghty, to Geraghty and Gearty; Mac Phaudeen, to Patten; O’Houlahan, to Nolan. This last change is not to be excused, for it entirely disguises the origin of the family; and we would therefore recommend the Nolans of the county of Galway to reject their false name, and re-assume that of O’Houlahan. This family were removed from Munster into Connaught by Oliver Cromwell, under the name of O’Houlahan, and they have therefore no just right to assume the name of another Irish family to whom they bear no relation whatsoever. The real Nolans of Ireland are of Leinster origin, and were the ancient chiefs of the barony of Forth, in the now county of Carlow, anciently called Foharta Fea, where they are still numerous; but the Connaught Nolans are not Nolans at all, but O’Houlahans, and are a family who bore the dignity of chieftains in ancient times, though it happens, that, not knowing their history, or taking a dislike to the sound of the name, they have, with questionable propriety, assumed the name of a Leinster family, which seems to sound somewhat better in modern ears. In the province of Ulster, the name Mac Gillaroe has been shortened to Gilroy and Kilroy; Mac Gillabride, to Mac Bride; Mac Gillacuskly, to Cuskly, and impertinently to Cosgrove and even Costello! Mac Gilla-Finnen, to Linden and Leonard; Mac Gennis, to Ennis and Guinness; Mac Blosky, to Mac Closky. In Munster the noble name of Mac Carthy (or, as it is pronounced in the original Irish, Maw Caurhă) has dwindled to Carty (a vile change!); O’Mulryan, to O’Ryan and Ryan; Mac Gilla-Synan, to Shannon; Mac Gillaboy, to Mac Evoy, &c. &c. In Leinster, all the O’s and Macs have been rejected; and though a few of them are to be met there now, in consequence of the influx of poor strangers of late into that province, it is certain that there is not a single instance in which the O’ or Mac has been retained by any of the aboriginal inhabitants of that province, I mean the _ancient Irish_ Leinster, not including Meath. The most distinguished of these was Mac Murrogh, but there is not a single individual of that name now living in Leinster; the descendants of Donnell Mac Murrogh Cavanagh, who, although illegitimate, became by far the most distinguished branch of that great family, having all changed their surnames to Cavanagh, and the other branches having, as the present writer has strong reasons to believe, changed it to Murphy. The writer has come to this latter conclusion from having ascertained that in the territory of the Murrows, in the county of Wexford, once the country of a great and powerful sept of the Mac Murroghs, the greater number of the inhabitants, who are perhaps the finest race of men in Ireland, are now called Murphy. He has therefore come to the conclusion, and he hopes not too hastily, that the Murphys of this territory are all Mac Murroghs. At the same time, however, he is well aware that the name generally anglicised Murphy is not Mac Murrogh, but O’Murchoo, which was that of a branch or offshoot of the regal family of Leinster, who became chiefs of the country of Hy-Felimy, and whose chief seat was at Tullow, in the now county of Carlow. The writer is well aware that the Murphys of the county of Carlow and Kilkenny are of this latter family, but he cannot get rid of the conviction that the Murphys of the Murrowes, in the east of the county of Wexford, are Mac Murroghs. On the subject of the difference between these two families, we find the learned Roderic O’Flaherty thus criticising Peter Walsh towards the close of the seventeenth century:--

“An O’ or a Mac is prefixed in Irish surnames to the proper names of some of their ancestors, intimating that they were the sons, grandsons, or posterity of the person whose name they adopted; but it was not proper to use one name promiscuously in the place of another, as he writes O’Murphy, king of Leinster, instead of Mac Murphy, or rather Mac Murchadh; but the family of O’Murchadha, which in English is Murphy, is very different from and inferior to this family.”--Ogygia, Part III, cap. xxvii.

There are also some few instances to be met with, in which the O’ has been changed to Mac, and _vice versa_, as in the remarkable instance of O’Melaghlin, chief of the Southern Hy-Niall race, to Mac Loughlin; also in those instances in which O’Duvyerma has been changed to Mac Dermot, O’Donoghy to Mac Donogh, O’Knavin to Mac Nevin, O’Heraghty to Mac Geraghty, and a few others.

These latter changes are not calculated to disguise the _Irish origin_ of the families who have made them, but they are still to be regretted, as they tend to disguise the origin, race, and locality of the respective families, and we should therefore like to see the original names restored.

Similar changes have been made in the family names among the Welsh, as Ap-John into Jones, Ap-Richard into Prichard and Richards, Ap-Owen into Owens, Ap-Robert into Probert and Roberts, Ap-Gwillim into Williams, &c. &c.