The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1895-06-07
COUNTRY COLLEENS.
The Queer Existence Of Rural
Maids in Ireland
Their Lives as Dull as Ditch Water
Match Making and Marrying
About Their Only
Diversion.

English sisters, with fewer resources
than the English girl has. It is in the
country that ennui dry rots. The Irish
maiden of whatever class has few re-
sources, says the New York Indepen-
dent. If she be of the Protestant and
gentle class - the term is nearly
synonymous V,he is reared in a drowsy
and gentle conservatism that excludes,
as a rule, books, except of the most
goodly sort, art, politics, and any inter
est in her neigh bors. She is generally
wrapped in love or in cotton wool, is
gentle, and most innocent of the world
and all appertaining thereto. Irish
girls have not the training of the fin
gers that the English girl usually has;
they have not the resource of needle
work or fancy work except to a slight
extent. Any departure, such as lit
erary inclination, would be little short
of scandal. The wings of home brood
over such girl, and in the shadow of
them she is likely to have dreams of
discomfort if she be of the imaginative
kind. There are not even the poor to
visit as there would be in England.
OF course for score of families such
as this there is one which enjoys itself,
hounds and the mother rides to the
meet in her pony phaeton. This is the
class which gives its daughters a sea-
son in town and has relays of visitors,
and entertains the officers from the
nearest garrison towns. But as rule
the lives of Irish gentlewomen are mar
rover, more colorless, and far more
conservative than those of their Eng
fish sisters.
The dearth of young men in every
place but the metropolis is a melan-
choly feature of social life in Ireland.
Families cannot afford to keep their
sons at home idle, while in all classes
except the most humble it is tradition
that the daughters should stay at home
and go white-handed. have heard of
evening parties where half dozen cav
alters, ranging from eighteen to eighty,
were apportioned to thirty or forty
ladies. True, 1 have seen nearly as
much disproportion at a Norfolk tennis
party, but there one did not SO pity the
maids, who were in many cases birds of
passage, and in other places had many
opportunities for pleasure.
The higher education has scarcely
reached the Irish country homes. In
Dublin there is an excellent wOmen's
college, the Alexandra, but its pupils
are mainly drawn from the professional
and mercantile classes of Dublin itself.
In the country places women are
leading very much the stagnant lives
of the women of the sos. They have
the gentler virtues and are not numer-
GUS enough-if that be not an unfair
and ignoble explanation-to form the
little coteries which in other lonely
places are apt to degenerate into tat
tiers and gossips. They have little out
door life. There is no reason why
Kathleen and Ely should not be anna
teur gardeners, for instance, and assist
the old gardener, who is rather handi-
capped for help; but there is the old
tradition of the helplessness and soft
handedness of the young ladies, often
enough they pine and fret in the lonely
and lovely country. For, if you will
observe, the beauty of a place becomes
meaningless to the blunted senses of
people lonely for their kind.
In this class matchmaking is, no
doubt, going out of fashion. 1t yet
prevails in the smaller farming class
and among the shop keepers of the
country towns. It demolishes honest
sentiment where it exists as a custom.
A girl said to me one day in a country
shop, handsome, clever girl: what
for should I save my money? If I
stinted and scraped year in and year
out, what good would it do me?
There's nobody in this town to marry
only ould shows of widowers, an
they're lookin' for a girl with three
hundred dollars I had said nothing
of marriage, and her non sequitur
meant that in her MIND the possession
of money was closely connected with
getting husband. She only shifted a
scornful disbelief when one limited at
the existence of such thing as love.
The matchmaking customs have
been too often described for me to go
over them here. My father has often
assisted at them when cattle-buying
in Munster, and has even brought one
or the other to terms by splitting the
difference" in the number of pounds or
cattle or sheep that were to make the
dowry. There is generally a conven-
lent intermediary of this sort present,
though it is with outward reluctance
the parties give in, and "on1y because
they wouldn't go ag'in Mr.. IS
word" All the time the boy and girl
are gazing shyly and awkwardly at each
other in an adjoining room, not know
ing whether they are to be husband
and wife, or if the "bargain" will be
broken off.
The strange thing is that the system
works well. Irish women are of all
women most faithful to the marriage
VOW. Domestic ties in Ireland are very
close and tender. Occasionally there is
such a tragedy as a girl coming fresh
from a convent school being handed
over to man fit to be her grandfather.
Even then the tragedy does not end in
unfaithfulness; and an unfaithful wife,
even where the people are less innocent
| and primitive than of old, is practically
thing unknown.
Head and Heart.