When  the  servants  were  illtreated  by  their  masters,
as  was  frequently  the  case,  they  "ran  away"  and  sought
new  fields,  and  in  the  colonial  newspapers  may  be  seen
numerous  advertisements  for  runaway  servants  offering
rewards  for  their  apprehension  and  return.  TVhile  the
"runaway  servants"  were   of  various  nationalities,   a


158  the  McCarthys

great  many  of  them  were  Irish.  In  the  advertisements
complete  descriptions  were  given  of  their  personal  ap-
pearance, and  there  are  many  instances  where  the  fact
that  "he  writes  a  good  hand,"  or  "he  speaks  good
English,"  was  suggested  as  a  means  of  identifying  the
'runaway.'  And  there  are  even  cases  where  Irish
"servant  men"  or  "servant  lads"  were  described  as
being  able  to  converse  in  several  languages,  usually
English,  Gaelic,  French  or  Latin,  and  sometimes  Greek!
Notwithstanding  the  fact  that  Gaelic  was  then  more
widely  spoken  in  Ireland  than  English,  and  that  the
youth  of  the  country  were  educated  mainly  in  their
native  tongue,  an  Irish  boy  or  girl  able  "to  speak  good
English"  or  "write  a  good  hand"  was  not  a  rarity,  and
the  fact  that  such  a  large  number  of  them  came  to  the
colonies  indicates  what  an  intelligent  class  Ireland  sent
to  America  in  the  formative  period  of  the  country's
history.  And  let  it  be  recorded  also,  that  the  vast  ma-
jority of  these,  as  the  names  in  the  newspaper  adver-
tisements clearly  indicate,  were  of  the  ancient  Celtic
stock,  and  not  the  so-called  "Scotch-Irish"  or  "Anglo-
Irish/  An  examination  of  the  newspapers  will  at
once  verify  the  truth  of  this  assertion.
