AN IRISH POOR SCHOLAR

From Irish Ideas by William O'Brien, 1893

Page 133

AN IRISH POOR SCHOLAR

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for a member of a superior order as unmistakably as if he wore the hood of a Doctor of Laws. The strands of silver hair fell into an artistic flourish about his delicately domed forehead. The withered hand which guided the razor left grey tufts straggling here and there about the lips and chin; there, nevertheless, was the neatness or the pride which would to the end display the contour of the well-rounded jaw and the play of the strong mobile mouth. The floss of his tall hat might have been black in the 'Fifties—for all I know, in the days of the Reform Bill; withal it was a dignified ruin. Its rust was venerable as the lichen of ages on an ancient monument. Several of the peasants who gathered to listen to him wore better garments, in the cast-clothes-dealer's sense of the term; their homespun finery, however, carried an indescribable badge of inferiority by the side of his napless, tawny coat of broadcloth, all but brushed to death. Strong farmers, who could give a fortune of 50l. or even 60l. with their daughters, obsequiously addressed him as ' Master ' Duffy—the gracious Latinised title which still distinguishes men of bock-learning in these glens. Master Duffy looks so old, and so old-fashioned, that there seems no superficial reason why he should not have seen Grace O'Malley running for Clew Bay with a prize galleass out of the Spanish silver fleet; or, for that matter, why he should not have seen St. Patrick banishing the reptiles from the top of the adjacent Reek. It has taken ninety years at the least to bend his old shoulders. ' What does that matter? ' he asked indignantly, as soon as he began to rouse his faculties and shake his stick. 'I was just on my way to smoke a pipe with an older man than myself, away back—nil ego contulerim jucundo sanus amico.' The classic words warmed him like old wine. His head was thrown back, his eyes afire, his voice rolled vigorously from the chest, … continue reading »

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