Fish On Friday

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!