The Mason County journal. [volume] (Shelton, W.T.) 1886-1927, 1889-05-31
HIBERNlAN BULLS,
One Of the Special Intellectual Qualitie
of the Irish.

Uno OF the Special Intellectual Qualities
of the Irish.
There are people who have expressed
q doubt whether the Irish bull has any
real place among intellectual fauna of
these islands. and is not, as a matter
OF fact, as non-existent as that earlier
product OF the same soil, the Irish elk.
They do not. of course, deny that GER
tain examples of verbal condition or of
lneongruity between words and things
have obtained currency as .:bulls, +"
but they decline to believe that any of
them were really uttered in good faith,
and they prefer to regard them simply
as the products of deliberately per-
verted kind of Irish humor. There
can no longer be any doubt that there
Is something in the constitution of the
Irish mind which predisposes it to
perceive congruity between words and
things where no such congruity exists
in fact, and to lose sight of the incom-
patibility OF two conceptions which no
man OF any other race would even for
moment think of as reconcilable.
Why this popularity should form one
OF the special intellectual qualities of
the Irish, and to be absent from or
not found to any thing like the same
extent in other peoples, is a curious
problem. Its most plausible explana-
ton, however, is not otherwise than
hattering to the bull-making race.
There can be little doubt, that is to
say, that the bull is only possible to a
very quickly working intelligence and
to a power of expression which re-
spends with exceptional rapidity to
the thought. No man whose ideas are
slow of formation in the mind or of
formation by the lips is capable of
committing a bull, for the simple
reason that the relation of his ideas to
each other Or to the world of external
fact have time to get themselves accur-
ately reviewed before any of these
ideas are translated into words. 1t is
necessary, too, to distinguish, for there
are obviously bulls and bulls. One
and perhaps the most fascinating,
because the most natural, of all
descriptions of the bull which is born.
so to speak, of rhetorical emotion
the bull which betrays the speaker,
like Europa, by the attractions OF
strength or grace. Mr.. Keene's Irish
man who, in indignant contradiction
of his English friends assertion that
Irish absentee landlords were less com.
mon than formerly. exclaims: "Ye're
wrong, me boy: me country swar-r-ms
with them" made the ideal bull of
the class to which refer. The seduc-
ton of the phrase which he used was
so great, it is so favorite a rhetorical
commonplace for the description OF
multitude of objects, that even an
Englishman can here sympathize with
the bull-maker and can feel that he,
too. in moment of unusual vivacity,
might have made the bull himself.
But there is another though not
perhaps so common a variety of
these mental stumbles, which has
nothing to do with the form of ex-
preston, and which arises from sheer
failure, of course only temporary,
to recognize the repugnancy OF
two mutually repugnant ideas. The
best, though possibly not the best au-
thenticated, example of it is one in
which the misleading influences OF
language are entirely eliminated, mas
much as the bull was committed by the
mere act of speaking, and not by what
was said. I refer to the well-known
anecdote of the man who, observing
himself overlooked in the act of writ
Ing to a friend by the prying eyes of
neighbor in the parlor of an inn, alb
ruptly closed his epistle with the
words: Il would write you more but
that an impertinent Irishman is read
ing every word of this letter over my
shoulder" Of course the story goes
on to relate that the words were no
sooner put on the paper than the Irish
man broke out into wrathful denial
of the charge. 1t is story which dis
tinctly ''lacks confirmation, but ]
should hesitate to pronounce it impos-
sib1e, and. though the most fragrant,
it is not the only instance of bull-in-
action.-English Illustrated Magazine