a dweller in "the hundreds": another famine exile

Irish Jesuit Province

A Dweller in "The Hundreds": Another Famine ExileAuthor(s): John HannonSource: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 34, No. 396 (Jun., 1906), pp. 329-332Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20500975 .

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[ 329 ]

A DWELLER IN "THE HUNDREDS"

ANOTHER FAMINE EXILE,

TOM Griffin was a quiet man, and he dwelt in the " Hundreds " at Brentford. My personal memories of Tom

are fast fading. I seem to recall a tall stooped man of forty,

with a dark, oval, priest-like face. But he passed out of my life

before I reached my teens; my people dwelt some mniles from

the historic town of the " Three Kings " and of the battle in

the Civil War. Suffice it that I now know him intimately from

talk with the " old neighbours,"of whom I was privileged to give

some account to readers of the April IRISH MONTHLY, in a sketch

entitled " Yellow Dan." For new readers, I may say, in few

words, that they were Famine emigrants, mostly from Munster,

who settled towards I85I, in Brentford, Isleworth, and Mortlake

-orchard-villages in the Valley of the Thames.

Tom was a " quiet " man. Every Corkonian of his day

pronounced the word in one syllable-" quite." Tom Griffin

went further. He could not manage the sound of " qu," but

made a " k" of it, as do the French. Thus Tom, in his ver

nacular, was a " kite " man. He was also one in reality-a

tranquil, easy-going, pious bachelor, who avoided disturbance

with his neighbours as the devil dodges holy water. Being

such, all Irishmen (and Irishwomen) will at once understand

the seeming paradox that Tom had bravely borne arms in the

insurrectionary movement of '48, had returned to have his

fling on the hill-side with the Fenians in '67, and retained to

his dying day a venerable musket, well kept and well oiled,

which hung beneath a crucifix over his mantel-piece, flanked by

pictures of St. Patrick and of Lord Edward Fitzgerald.

He had-though the humblest of Mass-going men-the

consciousness of this virtue of serenity. " I'm a kite man," he would say, whatever happened of a ruffling nature. " Yes,

yes; I'm a kite man." It became a by-word in exiled families

along the Valley. In our own little household, when I was in



330 THE IRISH MONTHLY

youthful tantrums, I was advised by my father to become " a

kite man,"* like Tom Griffin of the " Hundreds."

A word about these " Hundreds," in which so many of the

Famine exiles lived. One hardly knows whether to use the

singular or plural in speaking of them-or it. Brentford still

has its " Butts "-and a prosperous convent, giving work to

many a Catholic laundress, now flourishes in the broad space

once given up to archery. The " Hundreds "-a squat quad rangle of solid Georgian cottages-no longer exist. They have been bought up and built over with trim pseudo-villas-red

brick boxes with slated lids. Antiquarians used to worry about the name, I remember. One of the most learned of these, Mr.

James Britten, K.S.G., the founder of the Catholic Truth Society, was especially bothered. We read of the " hundred" of this

place and that in Domesday Book, but why the name of " Hundreds " as applied to a rectangular patch of ground en

closed by houses, in a biggish market town which must have been

of some importance even in the days of Wiliam the Norman ?

However this may be, the " Hundreds " were a very cosy, old world quarter as I remember them, with a strong contingent of

their English and Protestant aborigines dwelling in one half of the square, and a yet larger colony of Irish " neighbours" on the other.

At the far corner, to the right, and just opposite you as you

emerged from the bricked archway leading to the " Hundreds," was the house where Tom Griffin lodged. In the room on the ground floor were the pictures, the crucifix-and the musket, which report declared to contain a gill of powder, and a whole

egg-cup full of shot. It was not hard for small boys to gain an awed glimpse of these treasures; for the front door, opening immediately on the " lving room," was mostly open during the day when the vanithee was in and out, doing the household

* Tom Griffin's mispronunciation of the sound "

qu "

reminds me of a Charles Reade story, which has never before been printed. Reade could not pronounce the letter

" s," but substituted for it the sound "

gh," as heard in the Irish word, "

bough." My friend, Mr. David Christie Murray, was bantering Reade one day on the amount of extracts from blue-books and histories with which he overloaded his extraordinary novels. The retort of the author of Hard Cash has always struck me as one of the ablest defences of the higher plagiarism ever made.

" I may

milk a thoughand cowgh [a thousand cows] into my pail," he said, "

but the butter I churn igh my own !

"



A DWELLER IN " THE HUNDREDS" 33I

work for her family and her lodgers (one other, I think, beside

the "Ikite man "7). And in the warmer evenings, after his day's work, Tom

Griffin would sit at the open door, smoking his pipe till twilight

thickened into darkness. Then he would retire, leaving the

door half-open for ventilation, and say his rosary before the

crucifix over the mantel.

None disturbed him, though all saw him. Need it be written

that Tom's nightly prayer, with either closed or open door,

was the simplest matter of course to the " neighbours." As

to the rest-the English aborigines-they had become a kindly

folk by the 'seventies, and there were only shindies on Saturday

nights, when the trouble (however intensely annoying to a man

of Tom's " kite " temperament) was purely alcoholic and in

ternecine and (at any rate in my memory) but seldom racial

and religious, or in any way directed against their Irish fellow

dwellers as such. But at times, on pay nights, these British bricklayers'

labourers did fight, and most furiously, amongst themselves.

And there were Bank holidays, too, and-worst of all-there

were Sunday evenings. Tom's patience was often exhausted,

and he would close his door and bolt it, telling odd combatants

who surged almost into his room, that he was a quiet man.

" Yes, I'm a kite man." And, then, sorely perturbed over his

distraction, he would resume the interrupted mystery.

One Saturday night a battle-royal raged in the " Hundreds,"

such as English or Irish memory could not recall since the later

'fifties. Irishmen-perhaps the worst peacemakers in the

world when the din of battle is toward-imprudently rushed in

to separate " brickie " from " brickie," and infuriated spouse

from spouse. The racket, I was told by an eye-witness, was

terrific. One could scarce hear one's self think, as Americans

put it. Tom closed his door, and knelt again by the rush

bottomed chair, his beads in hand. Suddenly cries from the

surging groups without-shriller in their quality and accent

than those from the more stolid British gladiators-warned him

that the " peacemakers " had been drawn into a fray that was

not of their making. Ireland was involved. Irishmen were

giving and getting polthogues, doubtless spurred thereto by the

"redding blows" which are the peacemaker's lot the world



332 THE IRrSH MONTHLY

over, as well as in Scotland,* whence the phrase comes. Tom

Griffin arose, disposed reverently of his beads, and took down

the aged musket from the mantel-piece. These sketches, how

ever, being records of simple fact, it is best for once to be

prolix, and to say that all evidence points to his having done

so, for my eye-witness's narratives simply pick him up at the

point when he appeared outside his door, minus his rosary,

but levelling his gun at the thickest of the fight.

Then, before firing his venerable weapon, Tom spoke these

memorable words: " I'm a kite man," he said-(" rather pale in the face," I

have been assured)-" I'm a kite man. But, begor, boys,

here's Limerick I "

And he fired. There was a blinding flash and a terrific

report. The vanithee or Tom himself had mercifully drawn the

slugs, as it proved, but I am assured on all hands that the bang

was magnificent. The windows of the Hundreds rattled. An

English officer, to whom I have told the story, assures me that

by all the " rules of war " the hardened Fenian powder, caked and dried by years of toasting over the mantel-piece, should

have split the barrel and blown Tom's honest head off. But

nothing of the kind befell. The tough old musket stood the

strain, and when Tom's face merged radiant from the wreaths

of smoke which enshrouded it, the arena of the " Hundreds"

was void and silent. " Limerick," muttered Tom, with much satisfaction, putting

his emblem of Fatherland back on its hooks, and taking the

beads of his Faith once more between his fingers. " Limerick."

And when my main informant-who chanced to be my father

-emerged from behind the pump, where he had wisely taken

cover when there was a '48-267 musket playing alike upon the

just and the unjust in the " Hundreds," the quadrangle was as

bare of combatants " as a frog of feathers," and Tom Griffin

was peacefully engrossed in his beads. Beati pacifici-even if

they do lose their temper, once in a while.

JOHN HANNON.

* Sir Walter Scott calls it the "redding-straik," and mentions a Highland superstition which makes it the deadliest of wounds.



a dweller in "the hundreds": another famine exile

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