HYPHEN AND HYMEN. HYPHEN and HYMEN! wizards skilled to couple Sub persona: Mrs. Jane Hopkins, inviting the author to drink tea with her on her eighty-fifth birthday, Jan. 5, 1844. Ir it please God I am alive Next Friday, I'll be eighty-five; Come then, I pray, dear James, and spend That evening with your poor old friend, Tea and hot cake we'll have at seven; Or see you trip the floor along Till eye and ear drink-in such pleasure And my old heart grows young again. Then, when you 've sung and danced your fill, To the pie we'll fall, with right good will, The Christmas pie of well spiced meat, The pie discussed, we 'll wash it down. Till youth grows warm and age grows mellow, So don't forget next Friday night. [FITZWILLIAM-SQUARE, DUBLIN, Jan. 2, 1844.] TO THEIR EXCELLENCIES, THE LORDS JUSTICES. My Lords Justices of Ireland, listen to me, rich James Lennox William Naper; Though you seem to know your business well, there's no harm in giving you a flapper; It's neither to amuse myself nor you, I write this present letter,* But just by way of practice, and the next, it will be better. I sat, as you know, on a Commission with his Grace, the Archbishop of Dublin, Hatching out the reason why the Irish tenantry keep the country such a trouble in, *For Mr. Naper's letter to the Lords Justices of Ireland, recommending the building of the Irish workhouses, see Saunders' News - letter, Nov. 7. 1840. And instead of paying their rents quietly, when the half-year day 's come round, Enroll themselves in Ribbon-clubs and hold possession of the ground: And if any one the courage has to ask for what 's his own, Pop! through his back a bullet goes, or at his head a stone; Or it's maybe when the family 's just sitting down to tea, slugs patter In through the parlour window-sash, and cups and saucers shatter. We were hard put to it, I freely own, both myself and the Archbishop, But the true cause of all this trouble in the lóng run we did fish up: THE TENANTS SHOOT THEIR LANDLORDS, AND REFUSE TO PAY THEIR RENT, JUST BECAUSE THEY HAVE NO WORKHOUSES TO GO INTO WHEN ALL THEIR MONEY'S SPENT. Now if by chance there is any one so dull as not to understand That this, and this alone, 's the true cause of all the troubles of the land, Let him only read the Answer your Excellencies lately wrote To the magistrates of the county where Lord Norbury was shot, And Mr. Biddulph wounded, in the broad, high noon of day, Men, women, and children looking on, just as if it were a play. But though your Answer, my Lords Justices, makes it seem to me as clear As moonshine, the moonshiniest night in Ireland round the year, That want of workhouses is the cause of all the sad ills we endure, And the building of workhouses the only sure and certain cure, Yet I'm bold to tell your Lordships in as plain words as I can, 曲 When our workhouses are finished, we 'll be just where we began. It isn't that the landlords won't have to pay the rates, Which will swallow up the quarter or the half of their estates, - On the average, I mean, for, when the Union 's poor, The Guardians must the whole take, and the Act allows them, to be sure But then the tenant to pay his rent won't have one penny more, And tenant-ejecting and landlord-shooting will go on just as heretofore, And one of your Excellencies may the first be, to be shot, Which, as a friend and fellow land-holder, I pray God he may not. But God is good, I need not tell you, my most excellent Lords Justices, And if you but make haste enough with the building of the workhouses, And to put the Act in force, which to the Guardians of the poor Assigns over our estates, you will at once secure Not our precious lives alone, but whatever residue of our estates. May be remaining over for us landlords, after payment of the rates; And in cases where there's nothing left, there will still be refuge sure For the landlords, in the workhouses, as for any other poor. And now until the next time, my Lords Justices, adieu! Your most obedient servant, JAMES LENNOX WILLIAM NAPER [FITZWILLIAM-SQUARE, DUBLIN, Nov. 1840.] OF LOUGHCREW. TO THE RIVER GRIESE. SWEETLY unconscious flows thy gentle stream, How dear to me those banks in silence clipt And gently pressed by thy unheeding tide! But thou, no lover's rapture speeds thy pace, - This sacred spot approaching from afar; For ever close upon thee - I must go, But not, like thee, indifferent. Turn, my feet; Farewell, ye hallowed haunts, Elizabeth's* retreat. [Written in BALLITORE (CO. KILDARE), June 1818, in Mary Leadbeater's garden on the Griese, being the author's first rencontre with one of the Nine. See page 181.] *Formerly the residence of Miss Elizabeth Smith, and still known by the name of The Retreat. See Fragments of the late Elizabeth Smith. |