Carleton, William

William (1798-1869), an Irish novelist. He was born at Prillisk, County of Tyrone, and died at Dublin. His parents were poor and of humble rank, but were highly endowed by nature and of some little local fame; the father for his wonderful memory and gift as a story-teller; the mother for her sweet voice. Here was the boy's real education, although they gave him what scanty schooling their poverty could afford. He attended a hedge school, that is to say, a school in a large underground chamber behind a hedge, which the peasants were wont to dig as a substitute for a school-house. There was no furniture-no need of any. Each lad brought a handful of peat with which to maintain a fire on the middle of the floor. The smoke rose through a hole in the roof. If the dirt caved in, they roofed with sod or dug a new cave, as boys do.

A term or two at an academy completed Carleton's education. There was some talk of training him for the priesthood. This, however, was given up, and with three shillings in his pocket the young man started for Dublin to seek his fortune. At first he supported himself by tutoring. Soon, however, he began writing for the Christian Examiner. In 1830 was published the first series of Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry, which met with immediate success. Thenceforth, Carleton's name stood in the first rank of Irish novelists. A second series under the same title appeared in 1833. From this time on Carleton was recognized as Ireland's most famous story-teller. He did much to make the British public understand Ireland and her people.

The vein of Irish stories opened up by this writer is a delightful and pathetic one. Hedge schools, crop failures, shanty life, bog trotting, secret whiskey stills, wedding feasts, dances, races, deaths, wakes, fairs, boycotts, murder trials, and rescues are told with a keen zest worthy of comparison with Burns's Tam o' Shanter, Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, and Irving's Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Carleton's other writings are Fardarougha the Miser, by many considered his best; Valentine M'Clutchy; The Misfortunes of Barney Branigan; and Willie Reilly. For several years before his death Carleton received a pension of $1,000 a year.

Carleton's description of a "hedge school" from Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry is doubtless drawn from his own experience in the hedge schools where his early education was obtained:

You have now topped the little hill above the village. You descend on the other side, and, having advanced a few perches, look to the left, where you see a long thatched chapel, only distinguished from a dwelling-house by its want of chimneys, and a small stone cross that stands on the top of the eastern gable; behind it is a grave-yard, and beside it a snug public-house, well white-washed; then, to the right, you observe a door, apparently in the side of a clay bank, which rises considerably above the pavement of the road. What! you ask yourself, can this be a human habitation? But ere you have time to answer the question, a confused buzz of voices from within reaches your ear, and the appearance of a little gossoon, with a red close-cropped head and Milesian face, having in his hand a short white stick, or the thigh-bone of a horse, which you at once recognise as "the pass" of a village school, gives you the full information. He has an ink-horn, covered with leather, dangling at the button-hole (for he has long since played away the buttons) of his frieze jacket-his mouth is circumscribed with a streak of ink-his pen is stuck knowingly behind his ear-his shins are dotted over with fire-blisters, black, red, and blue-on each heel a kibe-his "leather crackers," videlicit, breeches, shrunk up upon him, and only reaching as far down as the caps of his knees. Having spied you, he places his hand over his brows, to throw back the dazzling light of the sun, and peers at you from under it, till he breaks out into a laugh, exclaiming, half to himself, half to you-

"You a gintleman !-no, nor one of your breed never was, you procthorin' thief, you !"

You are now immediately opposite the door of the seminary, when half a dozen of those seated next it notice you.

"Oh, sir, here's a gintleman on a horse !-masther, sir, here's a gintleman on a horse, wid boots and spurs on him, that's looking in at us."

"Silence !" exclaims the master; "back from the door-boys, rehearse-every one of you rehearse, I say, you Boetians, till the gintleman goes past !"

"I want to go out, if you plase, sir."

"No, you don't, Phelim."

"I do, indeed, sir."

"What ! is it afther contradictin' me you'd be? Don't you see the `porter's' out, and you can't go."

"Well, 't is Mat Meehan has it, sir; and he's out this half hour, sir; I can't stay in, sir."

"You want to be idling your time looking at the gintleman, Phelim."

"No, indeed, sir."

"Phelim, I knows you of ould-go to your sate. I tell you, Phelim, you were born for the encouragement of the hemp manufacture, and you'll die promoting it."

In the meantime the master puts his head out of the door, his body stooped to a "half bend"-a phrase, and the exact curve which it forms, I leave for the present to you own sagacity-and surveys you until you pass. That is an Irish hedge-school, and the personage who follows you with his eye a hedge-schoolmaster.