Every people, it is true,
have resorted to the habit of mutilating or changing in their oaths
the letters which form the Creator's name; but we question if any have
surpassed the Irish in the cleverness with which they accomplish it.
Mock oaths are habitual to Irishmen in ordinary conversation; but the
use of any or all of them is not considered to constitute an oath: on
the contrary, they are in the mouths of many who would not, except upon
a very solemn occasion indeed, swear by the name of the Deity in its
proper form.
The ingenuity of their mock oaths is sufficient to occasion much
perplexity to any one disposed to consider it in connection with the
character and moral feelings of the people. Whether to note it as a
reluctance on their part to incur the guilt of an oath, or as a proof of
habitual tact in evading it by artifice, is manifestly a difficulty hard
to be overcome. We are decidedly inclined to the former; for although
there is much laxity of principle among Irishmen, naturally to
be expected from men whose moral state has been neglected by the
legislature, and deteriorated by political and religious asperity,
acting upon quick passions and badly regulated minds--yet we know
that they possess, after all, a strong, but vague undirected sense of
devotional feeling and reverence, which are associated with great crimes
and awfully dark shades of character.
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