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FISH ON FRIDAY And Other Sketches Leonard Feeney (Sheed and Ward, 1934) Skheenarinka is not a Russian actress, a Hawaiian
swimmer, or a Japanese billiard player. It is a very small schoolhouse in
Ireland, in the County Tipperary, on the road that goes west from Clonmel,
near a village I cannot remember, at the foot of a mountain I cannot spell. Skheenarinka leaves a pleasurable tinkle in your mouth
when you say it, but more than that, it is full of surprise and delight in
its meaning. It means in Irish “the little dancing bush.” Being by profession
a schoolmaster, and by folly a rhymer, how could I resist the schoolhouse of
the little dancing bush? I did not resist it. I walked boldly up to it, and
tapped at the window. Master Connolly’s scholars swiveled their small heads
like a squadron of sparrows frightened at a noise, and the master himself
came shuffling to the door to unlatch me a welcome. One of the greatest charms of the Irish
character is the easy formality of making friends with it. There is never any
need of “How do you do?” or “Have I met you before?” or “Have we been
properly introduced?” And one is never required to resort to subterfuges like
“Could you tell me the time of day?” or “Is this the road to Currabinney
Junction?” One has only to select one’s Irishman, walk up to him casually
(not nervously or jerkily, for he is bee-like in his behavior: his sting for
the wary, his honey for the candid) and say something like this: “I am trying
to remember a tune called ‘The Peeler and the Goat’; could you whistle it for
me, please?” With perfect imperturbability, as though the incident were
prearranged, he will wet his whistle and blow you the tune. Then, for good
measure, he will tell you a story about a peeler, or, even better, a story
about a goat. In ten minutes you will be intimate enough with him to borrow
his pipe. If it is near mealtime you will dine in his cottage. If it is
nightfall you sleep in his extra bed. At the risk of running ahead of my story, let me spend
myself in praise of Master Connolly’s quality as I eventually came to
discover it. And whereas I know, at present writing, five Irish schoolmasters,
he may stand as typical of their immense goodness. (And if you, Michael of
Burncourt, and you, Fionna of Dublin, should ever read this, be aware, with a
blush, that you are bracketed with the great Connolly in my admiration and
affection.) The old master of Skheenarinka is a tall man with
adjustable spectacles, reddish-brown hair patched with silver, and a
countenance of amazing sweetness and sincerity. For all his sixty years, his
eyes are fresh and young, and his face is full and wrinkleless. His mouth
(and this is the surest outward test of culture) is easy and flexible in its
movements. He breathes his syllables quietly and with relish, and while his
lips are molding them into sound, the red maneuverings of a trim mustache
lend emphasis and variety to their meaning. His voice is eminently
pedagogical, the voice of a story-teller. His arms are long, and they slide
out of his shirt sleeves for unbelievable distances when he gesticulates. But
his feet are small and suitable for dancing. His esthetic nature betrays
itself in a bright waistcoat with assorted buttons. He wears a gay tie. And
he manages, with only moderate success, an extra lick in his hair. In his day
he was a sportsman, rode a good saddle, shot a good shot, and fished a good fish.
But at sixty, at eventide, he keeps to his garden and his orchard. Indoors,
he plays a masterly game of cribbage, and can squeeze a tolerable melody out
of an old concertina, something plaintive, aboriginal, Druidic, that makes
you want to cry. Master Connolly’s share of erudition is not large (for
books are expensive, and Ireland is even poorer than you think it is), but
his native intelligence is astounding. When the topic of conversation moves
into the sure field of his own capacities (and they are many) he speaks with
clearness, brilliance, and authority. His mind is an elegant instrument,
faultless in its logic, practiced in its idiom, and beautiful in its
metaphor. Frequent excursions into the realm of the supernatural have given
it a warmth and a charity not of this world. He looks upon his calling as a
challenge and a trust. Nightly on his knees he importunes God to make him a
good master, true to his tradition, valiant in his faith, and honest in his
utterances. Such then, all inadequately, is the genius of this
lovable philomath of Tipperary, who, for a few shillings a week, in a shack
in an open field, shadowed by an ancient tree, by the side of a dancing bush,
at the foot of an unspellable mountain, sits patiently with his thirty ragged
schoolboys, and tempts their little minds to struggle and fly. Barelegged and
rumple-haired they come over boreen and meadow at the crack of the morning
bell, with their three books and a slate, trotting through potato patches and
climbing over walls. Their little naked feet, calloused and cut by pebbles,
are clean and wet from dewy anointings in the spongy acres of bog. Their
eyes, blue, hazel, green, orange and chestnut, are restless with sparkle and
squinty with sunshine. All knees and elbows, cluttering and squirming like a
herd of he-kittens, they wait for the master in the school-yard. They are
nature’s children, unspoiled by artifice, untouched by modernity. Bred in the
hallowed bodies of pure womenfolk; laid in their baptismal bonnets and
christening dresses on Our Lady’s altar, and offered to her for protection;
nurseryed in a storyland of wonder and poverty and prayer; clean-lunged and
lithe from roaming in the fields; friendly with the fairies and intimate with
young Jesus; by these few little ones, the last and the loneliest, Ireland
renews herself again, and takes hold on one more generation of men. But let me tap again at the window and watch the old
master of Skheenarinka coming out to greet me at the door. “Good morning, master,” said I. “Good morning to your Reverence,” said he. “We are strangers,” said I. “We might easily be friends,” said he. “I come from a land,” said I, “where they name
schoolhouses after dead philanthropists and live politicians. Will you let me
come in?” The master smiled, sniffed me a bit,
seemed to find me genuine, reached out his hand and said, “Welcome!” After
little or no formality he threw open the classroom door and ushered me to the
visitor’s seat. Thirty pairs of eyes looked at me with mingled reverence and
alarm. The master introduced me in Irish, saying something evidently very
courteous, for they all nodded to me respectfully, and something very funny,
at which they all laughed. I stood up a trifle abashed and, trying to recall
old tricks, made my début before the younglings of Ireland. One false step,
and I knew they were lost to me forever. One sure stroke, and they would be
mine irrevocably, “I came in, boys,” I said, watching them cautiously, “to
stump you in your Catechism.” A roar of laughter, like a clap of musical thunder,
broke forth in those four narrow walls. It was more than the laughter of
nervousness set at ease; it was the laughter of exquisite contempt. It was
vibrant with a hundred disdainful replies. “Stump us in our Catechism! We!
The Irish! We who were fed Christian Doctrine with our first sups of milk!
Stump us! The crack batsmen of the Roman Catechetical Church! Who have
faced undauntedly the mouths of a dozen Canons, Bishops and Monsignori! The
progeny of Patrick! The scions of a race that never knew a doubt and never
held a heresy! Come on with the best there is in you!” I began with the usual things: the Blessed Trinity, the
Incarnation, Our Lady, the Sacraments, Prayer. But it was like tossing
elephants into the air for champion marksmen to shoot at. I then threw a few
questions with a spin on them. They were returned with the spin reversed. I
led them out into deep water and they followed fearlessly. And only when, in
my absurdity, I began talking like the Council of Trent, did I get hesitating
answers. And even then, they never said anything definitely wrong. They were
merely puzzled that anyone could conceive such silly difficulties in regard
to facts so patent and childlike as the truths of the Catholic Faith. It was Bartley, the village butcher’s boy, who broke up
the encounter and enabled me to retire from my quiz gracefully. Bartley is
only four and a half years old. He is allowed to come to school as a
privilege, because his mother is dead, and his father cannot find time to
manage him in the butcher’s shop. He sits in the back of the classroom and
draws pictures under Master Connolly’s direction. He is a pet, and he knows
it. He seems even to understand that he has not reached the use of reason,
and so can enjoy liberties that are denied to full-fledged intellectuals.
Bartley evidently grew tired of my heretical effrontery in trying to dislodge
the Rock of Peter with pin pricks, so he waddled disgustedly down the aisle,
and taking hold of Master Connolly’s fingers and snuggling his little face in
the master’s hand, he cried out fervently: “I believe in God! I believe in
God!” “Do you, my little love?” said Master Connolly with
infinite tenderness. “Well, now, here’s a big jump for you up to the sky!”
And little Bartley went sailing up to the ceiling in the teacher’s strong
arms. And winking at me, the master remarked: “He’s a shrewd gossoon, Father; he knows that besides
being meritorious in Heaven, these cute professions of Faith are good for an
apple at recess time.” The master then took the class in hand, and we had
specimens in reading and sums and geography. Some of it was done in Irish,
with running translations for my benefit by the master. There was a story
about a daisy, read in unison by the class, with inflections and cadences
that were fascinating. There was some swift and brilliant work in mental
arithmetic. And, in my especial honor, there was a treatise on the soil, the
climate, and the inhabitants of the United States of America. Then came early
dismissal, which I was allowed to declare officially. And last of all the
prayer for the closing of class. I shall never forget that prayer. It was the
prayer of vision. The Irish do not merely talk to God. They coax Him. They
cajole Him. They breathe on Him, like children pressed close to their
Father’s bosom and cradled in His arms. It was on the road to the master’s
cottage (where one would have been dragged by the coat-tails if one had
refused to go) that the great Connolly opened his heart to me; and during a
delightful hour in the garden, and over a monster dinner prepared by his
lovely wife and sweetened by her presiding presence at the tea-pot, and in
the master’s study, after our conversation had been whetted by a glass (maybe
it was two glasses!) of noble wine; and during the whole of an autumn
afternoon, until the sun had gone down behind the hill, and my day’s schedule
had been totally abandoned. And when at night I raced down the road to the
station house, I was barely in time to catch the last train for Dublin. Skheenarinka
is now a permanent word in my vocabulary, It has the flavor of a good swear
word, and serves me in that capacity when the Devil tempts me to profanity.
It is also my word of magic. Skheenarinka! . . . Run along to
school, you Tipperary toddlers! A little fairy is clinking her castanets! A
little bush is dancing in the wind! |