" ( ** Say I.)
* There is a superstitious belief in some parts of
Ireland, that priests' money is unlucky; "because," say
the people, "it is the price of sin"--alluding to
absolution.
It is by trifles of this nature that the unreasonable though enduring
hatred with which the religious sects of Ireland look upon those of a
different creed is best known. This feeling, however, is sufficiently
mutual. Yet on both sides there is something more speculative than
practical in its nature. When they speak of each other as a distinct
class, the animosity, though abstracted, appears to be most deep; but
when they mingle in the necessary intercourse of life, it is curious
to see them frequently descend, on both sides, from the general rule to
those exceptions of good-will and kindness, which natural benevolence
and mutual obligation, together with a correct knowledge of each other's
real characters, frequently produce. Even this abstracted hatred,
however, has been the curse of our unhappy country; it has kept us too
much asunder, or when we met exhibited us to each other in our darkest
and most offensive aspects.
Dominick's conduct in the matter of the priest's money was also a happy
illustration of that mixture of simplicity and shrewdness with which
an Irishman can frequently make points meet, which superstition, alone,
without such ingenuity, would keep separate for ever. Many another
man might have refused the money from an ignorant dread of its proving
unlucky; but his mode of reasoning on the subject was satisfactory
to himself, and certainly the most ingenious which, according to his
belief, he could have adopted--that of foisting it upon a heretic.
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