THE WORKS OF WILLIAM CARLETON
VOLUME III.
TRAITS AND STORIES OF THE IRISH PEASANTRY
The Ned M'Keown Stories
CONTENTS
[ THE BATTLE OF THE FACTIONS. ]
List of Illustrations
[ Page 656— Bringing Home “graceless Ned,” ]
[ Age 676— Throw It over Your Left Shoulder ]
[ Page 693— How he Kept his Sate So Long Has Puzzled Me ]
1881.
INTRODUCTION.
It will naturally be expected, upon a new issue of works which may be said to treat exclusively of a people who form such an important and interesting portion of the empire as the Irish peasantry do, that the author should endeavor to prepare the minds of his readers—especially those of the English and Scotch—for understanding more clearly their general character, habits of thought, and modes of feeling, as they exist and are depicted in the subsequent volume. This is a task which the author undertakes more for the sake of his country than himself; and he rejoices that the demand for the present edition puts it in his power to aid in removing many absurd prejudices which have existed for time immemorial against his countrymen.
It is well known that the character of an Irishman has been hitherto uniformly associated with the idea of something unusually ridiculous, and that scarcely anything in the shape of language was supposed to proceed from his lips, but an absurd congeries of brogue and blunder. The habit of looking upon him in a ludicrous light has been so strongly impressed upon the English mind, that no opportunity has ever been omitted of throwing him into an attitude of gross and overcharged caricature, from which you might as correctly estimate his intellectual strength and moral proportions, as you would the size of a man from his evening shadow. From the immortal bard of Avon down to the writers of the present day, neither play nor farce has ever been presented to Englishmen, in which, when an irishman is introduced, he is not drawn as a broad, grotesque blunderer, every sentence he speaks involving a bull, and every act the result of headlong folly, or cool but unstudied effrontery. I do not remember an instance in which he acts upon the stage any other part than that of the buffoon of the piece uttering language which, wherever it may have been found, was at all events never heard in Ireland, unless upon the boards of a theatre. As for the Captain O'Cutters, O'Blunders, and Dennis Bulgrudderies, of the English stage, they never had existence except in the imagination of those who were as ignorant of the Irish people as they were of their language and feelings. Even Sheridan himself was forced to pander to this erroneous estimate and distorted conception of our character; for, after all, Sir Lucius O'Trigger was his Irishman but not Ireland's Irishman. I know that several of my readers may remind me of Sir Boyle Roche, whose bulls have become not only notorious, but proverbial. It is well known now, however, and was when he made them, that they were studied bulls, resorted to principally for the purpose of putting the government and opposition sides of the Irish House of Commons into good humor with each other, which they never failed to do—thereby, on more occasions than one, probably, preventing the effusion of blood, and the loss of life, among men who frequently decided even their political differences by the sword or pistol.
That the Irish either were or are a people remarkable for making bulls or blunders, is an imputation utterly unfounded, and in every sense untrue. The source of this error on the part of our neighbors is, however, readily traced. The language of our people has been for centuries, and is up to the present day, in a transition state. The English tongue is gradually superseding the Irish. In my own native place, for instance, there is not by any means so much Irish spoken now, as there was about twenty or five-and-twenty years ago. This fact, then, will easily account for the ridicule which is, and I fear ever will be, unjustly heaped upon those who are found to use a language which they do not properly understand. In the early periods of communication between the countries, when they stood in a hostile relation to each other, and even long afterwards, it was not surprising that “the wild Irishman” who expressed himself with difficulty, and often impressed the idiom of his own language upon one with which he was not familiar, should incur, in the opinion of those who were strongly prejudiced against him, the character of making the bulls and blunders attributed to him. Such was the fact, and such the origin of this national slander upon his intellect,—a slander which, like every other, originates from the prejudice of those who were unacquainted with the quickness and clearness of thought that in general characterizes the language of our people. At this moment there is no man acquainted with the inhabitants of the two countries, who does not know, that where the English is vernacular in Ireland, it is spoken with far more purity, and grammatical precision than is to be heard beyond the Channel. Those, then, who are in the habit of defending what are termed our bulls, or of apologizing for them, do us injustice; and Miss Edgeworth herself, when writing an essay upon the subject, wrote an essay upon that which does not, and never did exist. These observations, then, easily account for the view of us which has always been taken in the dramatic portion of English literature. There the Irishman was drawn in every instance as the object of ridicule, and consequently of contempt; for it is incontrovertibly true, that the man whom you laugh at you will soon despise.
In every point of view this was wrong, but principally in a political one. At that time England and Englishmen knew very little of Ireland, and, consequently, the principal opportunities afforded them of appreciating our character were found on the stage. Of course, it was very natural that the erroneous estimate of us which they formed there should influence them everywhere else. We cannot sympathize with, and laugh at, the same object at the same time; and if the Irishman found himself undeservedly the object of coarse and unjust ridicule, it was not very unnatural that he should requite it with a prejudice against the principles and feelings of Englishmen, quite as strong as that which was entertained against himself. Had this ridicule been confined to the stage, or directed at us in the presence of those who had other and better opportunities of knowing us, it would have been comparatively harmless. But this was not the case. It passed from the stage into the recesses of private life, wrought itself into the feelings until it became a prejudice, and the Irishman was consequently looked upon, and treated, as being made up of absurdity and cunning,—a compound of knave and fool, fit only to be punished for his knavery, or laughed at for his folly. So far, therefore, that portion of English literature which attempted to describe the language and habits of Irishmen, was unconsciously creating an unfriendly feeling between the two countries, a feeling which, I am happy to say, is fast disappearing, and which only requires that we should have a full and fair acquaintance with each other in order to be removed for ever.
At present, indeed, their mutual positions, civil, commercial, and political, are very different from what they were half a century ago, or even at a more recent period. The progress of science, and the astonishing improvements in steam and machinery, have so completely removed the obstructions which impeded their intercourse, that the two nations can now scarcely be considered as divided. As a natural consequence, their knowledge of each other has improved; and, as will always happen with generous people, they begin to see that the one was neither knave or fool, nor the other a churl or a boor. Thus has mutual respect arisen from mutual intercourse, and those who hitherto approached each other with distrust are beginning to perceive, that in spite of political or religious prejudices, no matter how stimulated, the truthful experience of life will in the event create nothing but good-will and confidence between the countries.
Other causes, however, led to this;—causes which in every state of society exercise a quick and powerful influence over the minds of men:—I allude to literature.
When the Irishman was made to stand forth as the butt of ridicule to his neighbors, the first that undertook his vindication was Maria Edgeworth. During her day, the works of no writer made a more forcible impression upon the circles of fashionable life in England, if we except the touching and inimitable Melodies of my countryman, Thomas Moore. After a lapse of some years, these two were followed by many others, who stood forth as lofty and powerful exponents of the national heart and intellect. Who can forget the melancholy but indignant reclamations of John Banim,—the dark and touching power of Gerald Griffin,—or the unrivalled wit and irresistible drollery of Samuel Lover? Nor can I omit remarking, that amidst the array of great talents to which I allude, the genius of our female writers bore off, by the free award of public opinion, some of the brightest wreaths of Irish literature. It would be difficult indeed, in any country, to name three women who have done more in setting right the character of Ireland and her people, whilst exhibiting at the same time the manifestations of high genius, than Miss Edgeworth, Lady Morgan, and Mrs. Hall. About the female creations ol the last-named lady, especially, there is a touching charm, blending the graceful and the pensive, which reminds us of a very general but peculiar style of Irish beauty, where the lineaments of the face combine at once both the melancholy and the mirthful in such a manner, that their harmony constitutes the unchangeable but ever-varying tenderness of the expression.
That national works like these, at once so healthful and so true, produced by those who knew the country, and exhibiting Irishmen not as the blundering buffoons of the English stage, but as men capable of thinking clearly and feeling deeply—that such works, I say, should enable a generous people, as the English undoubtedly are, to divest themselves of the prejudices which they had so long entertained against us, is both natural and gratifying. Those who achieved this great object, or aided in achieving it, have unquestionably rendered services of a most important nature to both the countries, as well as to literature in general.
Yet, whilst the highly gifted individuals whom I have named succeeded in making their countrymen respected, there was one circumstance which, nothwithstanding every exhibition of their genius and love of country, still remained as a reproach against our character as a nation. For nearly a century we were completely at the mercy of our British neighbors, who probably amused themselves at our expense with the greater license, and a more assured sense of impunity, inasmuch as they knew that we were utterly destitute of a national literature. Unfortunately the fact could not be disputed. For the last half century, to come down as far as we can, Ireland, to use a plain metaphor, instead of producing her native intellect for home consumption, was forced to subsist upon the scanty supplies which could be procured from the sister kingdom. This was a reproach which added great strength to the general prejudice against us.
A nation may produce one man or ten men of eminence, but if they cannot succeed in impressing their mind upon the spirit and intellect of their own country, so as to create in her a taste for literature or science, no matter how highly they may be appreciated by strangers, they have not reached the exalted purposes of genius. To make this more plain I shall extend the metaphor a little farther. During some of the years of Irish famine, such were the unhappy circumstances of the country, that she was exporting provisions of every description in most prodigal abundance, which the generosity of England was sending back again for our support. So was it with literature, our men and women of genius uniformly carried their talents to the English market, whilst we labored at home under all the dark privations of a literary famine.
In truth, until within the last ten or twelve years, an Irish author never thought of publishing in his own country, and the consequence was that our literary men followed the example of our great landlords; they became absentees, and drained the country of its intellectual wealth precisely as the others exhausted it of its rents.
Thus did Ireland stand in the singular anomaly of adding some of her most distinguished names to the literature of Great Britain, whilst she herself remained incapable of presenting anything to the world beyond a school-book or a pamphlet; and even of the latter it is well-known that if the subject of it were considered important, and its author a man of any talent or station in society, it was certain to be published in London.
Precisely in this state was the country when the two first volumes of the “Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry” were given to the public by the house of Messrs. Gurry and Co., of Sackville Street. Before they appeared, their author, in consequence of their originating from an Irish press, entertained no expectation that they would be read, or excite any interest whatever in either England or Scotland. He was not, however, without a strong confidence that notwithstanding the wild and uncleared state of his own country at the time, so far as native literature was concerned, his two little pioneers would work their way with at least moderate success. He felt conscious that everything depicted in them was true, and that by those who were acquainted with the manners, and language, and feelings of the people, they would sooner or later be recognized as faithful delineations of Irish life. In this confidence the event justified him; for not only were his volumes stamped with an immediate popularity at home, where they could be best appreciated, but awarded a very gratifying position in the literature of the day by the unanimous and not less generous verdict of the English and Scotch critics.
Thus it was that the publication of two unpretending volumes, written by a peasant's son, established an important and gratifying fact—that our native country, if without a literature at the time, was at least capable of appreciating, and willing to foster the humble exertions of such as endeavored to create one. Nor was this all; for so far as resident authors were concerned, it was now clearly established that an Irish writer could be successful at home without the necessity of appearing under the name and sanction of the great London or Edinburgh booksellers.
The rapid sale and success of the first series encouraged the author to bring out a second, which he did, but with a different bookseller. The spirit of publishing was now beginning to extend, and the talent of the country to put itself in motion. The popularity of the second effort surpassed that of the first, and the author had the gratification of knowing that the generosity of public feeling and opinion accorded him a still higher position than before, as did the critics of the day, without a dissentient voice. Still, as in the case of his first effort, he saw with honest pride that his own country and his countrymen placed the highest value upon his works, because they best understood them.
About this time the literary taste of the metropolis began to feel the first symptoms of life. As yet, however, they were very faint. Two or three periodicals were attempted, and though of very considerable merit, and conducted by able men, none of them, I believe, reached a year's growth. The “Dublin Literary Gazette,” the “National Magazine,” the “Dublin Monthly Magazine,” and the “Dublin University Review,” all perished in their infancy—not, however, because they were unworthy of success, but because Ireland was not then what she is now fast becoming, a reading, and consequently a thinking, country. To every one of these the author contributed, and he has the satisfaction of being able to say that there has been no publication projected purely for the advancement of literature in his own country, to which he has not given the aid of his pen, such as it was, and this whether he received remuneration or not. Indeed, the consciousness that the success of his works had been the humble means of inciting others to similar exertion in their own country, and of thus giving the first impulse to our literature, is one which has on his part created an enthusiastic interest in it which will only die with him.
Notwithstanding the failure of the periodicals just mentioned, it was clear that the intellect of the country was beginning to feel its strength and put forth its power. A national spirit that rose above the narrow distinctions of creed and party began to form itself, and in the first impulses of its early enthusiasm a periodical was established, which it is only necessary to name—the “Dublin University Magazine”—a work unsurpassed by any magazine of the day; and which, moreover, without ever departing from its principles, has been as a bond of union for literary men of every class, who have from time to time enriched its pages by their contributions. It has been, and is, a neutral spot in a country where party feeling runs so high, on which the Roman Catholic Priest and the Protestant Parson, the Whig, the Tory, and the Radical, divested of their respective prejudices, can meet in an amicable spirit. I mention these things with great satisfaction, for it is surely a gratification to know that literature, in a country which has been so much distracted as Ireland, is progressing in a spirit of noble candor and generosity, which is ere long likely to produce a most salutary effect among the educated classes of all parties, and consequently among those whom they influence. The number, ability, and importance of the works which have issued from the Dublin press within the last eight or ten years, if they could be enumerated here, would exhibit the rapid progress of the national mind, and satisfy the reader that Ireland in a few years will be able to sustain a native literature as lofty and generous, and beneficial to herself, as any other country in the world can boast of.
This hasty sketch of its progress I felt myself called upon to give, in order that our neighbors may know what we have done, and learn to respect us accordingly; and, if the truth must be told, from a principle of honest pride, arising from the position which our country holds, and is likely to hold, as an intellectual nation.
Having disposed of this topic, I come now to one of not less importance as being connected with the other,—the condition and character of the peasantry of Ireland.
It maybe necessary, however, before entering upon this topic, to give my readers some satisfactory assurance that the subject is one which I ought well to understand, not only from my humble position in early life, and my uninterrupted intercourse with the people as one of themselves, until I had reached the age of twenty-two years, but from the fact of having bestowed upon it my undivided and most earnest attention ever since I left the dark mountains and green vales of my native Tyrone, and began to examine human life and manners as a citizen of the world. As it is admitted, also, that there exists no people whose character is so anomalous as that of the Irish, and consequently so difficult to be understood, especially by strangers, it becomes a still more appropriate duty on my part to give to the public, proofs sufficiently valid, that I come to a subject of such difficulty with unusual advantages on my side, and that, consequently, my exhibitions of Irish peasant life, in its most comprehensive sense, may be relied on as truthful and authentic. For this purpose, it will be necessary that I should give a brief sketch of my own youth, early station in society, and general education, as the son of an honest, humble peasant.
My father, indeed, was a very humble man, but, in consequence of his unaffected piety and stainless integrity of principle, he was held in high esteem by all who knew him, no matter what their rank in life might be. When the state of education in Ireland during his youth and that of my mother is considered, it will not be a matter of surprise that what they did receive was very limited. It would be difficult, however, if not impossible, to find two persons in their lowly station so highly and singularly gifted. My father possessed a memory not merely great or surprising, but absolutely astonishing. He could repeat nearly the whole of the Old and New Testament by heart, and was, besides, a living index to almost every chapter and verse you might wish to find in it. In all other respects, too, his memory was equally amazing. My native place is a spot rife with old legends, tales, traditions, customs, and superstitions; so that in my early youth, even beyond the walls of my own humble roof, they met me in every direction. It was at home, however, and from my father's lips in particular, that they were perpetually sounding in my ears. In fact, his memory was a perfect storehouse, and a rich one, of all that the social antiquary, the man of letters, the poet, or the musician, would consider valuable. As a teller of old tales, legends, and historical anecdotes he was unrivalled, and his stock of them was inexhaustible. He spoke the Irish and English languages with nearly equal fluency. With all kinds of charms, old ranns, or poems, old prophecies, religious superstitions, tales of pilgrims, miracles, and pilgrimages, anecdotes of blessed priests and friars, revelations from ghosts and fairies, was he thoroughly acquainted. And so strongly were all these impressed upon my mind, by frequent repetition on his part, and the indescribable delight they gave me on mine, that I have hardly ever since heard, during a tolerably enlarged intercourse with Irish society, both educated and uneducated, with the antiquary, the scholar, or the humble senachie—any single tradition, usage, or legend, that, as far as I can at present recollect, was perfectly new to me or unheard before, in some similar or cognate dress. This is certainly saying much; but I believe I may assert with confidence that I could produce, in attestation of its truth, the dairies of Petrie, Sir W. Betham, Ferguson, and O'Donovan, the most distinguished antiquaries, both of social usages and otherwise, that ever Ireland produced. What rendered this, besides, of such peculiar advantage to me in after life, as a literary man, was, that I heard them as often in the Irish language as in the English, if not oftener, in circumstance which enabled me in my writings to transfer the genius, the idiomatic peculiarity and conversational spirit of the one language into the other, precisely as the people themselves do in their dialogue, whenever the heart or imagination happens to be moved by the darker or better passions.
Having thus stated faithfully, without adding or diminishing, a portion, and a portion only, of what I owe to one parent, I cannot overlook the debt of gratitude which is due to the memory of the other.
My mother, whose name was Kelly—Mary Kelly—possessed the sweetest and most exquisite of human voices. In her early life, I have often been told by those who had heard her sing, that any previous intimation of her presence at a wake, dance, or other festive occasion, was sure to attract crowds of persons, many from a distance of several miles, in order to hear from her lips the touching old airs of their country. No sooner was it known that she would attend any such meeting, than the fact spread throughout the neighborhood like wild-fire, and the people flocked from all parts to hear her, just as the fashionable world do now, when the name of some eminent songstress is announced in the papers; with this difference, that upon such occasions the voice of the one falls only upon the ear, whilst that of the other sinks deeply into the heart. She was not so well acquainted with the English tongue as my father, although she spoke it with sufficient ease for all the purposes of life; and for this reason, among others, she generally gave the old Irish versions of the songs in question, rather than the English ones. This, however, as I said, was not her sole motive. In the first place, she had several old songs, which at that time,—I believe, too, I may add at this,—had never been translated; and I very much fear that some valuable ones, both as to words and airs, have perished with her. Her family were all imbued with a poetical spirit, and some of her immediate ancestors composed in the Irish tongue several fine old songs, in the same manner as Carolan did; that is, some in praise of a patron or a friend, and others to celebrate rustic beauties, that have long since been sleeping in the dust. For this reason she had many old compositions that were almost peculiar to our family, which I am afraid could not now be procured at all, and are consequently lost. I think her uncle, and I believe her grandfather, were the authors of several Irish poems and songs, because I know that some of them she sang, and others she only recited.
Independently of this, she had a prejudice against singing the Irish airs to English words; an old custom of the country was thereby invaded, and an association disturbed which habit had rendered dear to her. I remember on one occasion, when she was asked to sing the English version of that touching melody, “The Red-haired Man's Wife,” she replied, “I will sing it for you; but the English words and the air are like a quarrelling man and wife: the Irish melts into the tune, but the English doesn't,” an expression scarcely less remarkable for its beauty than its truth. She spoke the words in Irish.
This gift of singing with such sweetness and power the old sacred songs and airs of Ireland, was not the only one for which she was remarkable. Perhaps there never lived a human being capable of giving the Irish cry, or Keene, with such exquisite effect, or of pouring into its wild notes a spirit of such irresistible pathos and sorrow. I have often been present when she has “raised the keene” over the corpse of some relative or neighbor, and my readers may judge of the melancholy charm which accompanied this expression of her sympathy, when I assure them that the general clamor of violent grief was gradually diminished, from admiration, until it became ultimately hushed, and no voice was heard but her own—wailing in sorrowful but solitary beauty. This pause, it is true, was never long, for however great the admiration might be which she excited, the hearts of those who heard her soon melted, and even strangers were often forced to confess her influence by the tears which she caused them to shed for those whose deaths could, otherwise, in no other way have affected them. I am the youngest, I believe, of fourteen children, and of course could never have heard her until age and the struggles of life had robbed her voice of its sweetness. I heard enough, however, from her blessed lips, to set my heart to an almost painful perception of that spirit which steeps these fine old songs in a tenderness which no other music possesses. Many a time, of a winter night, when seated at her spinning-wheel, singing the Trougha, or Shuil agra, or some other old “song of sorrow,” have I, then little more than a child, gone over to her, and with a broken voice and eyes charged with tears, whispered, “Mother dear, don't sing that song, it makes me sorrowful;” she then usually stopped, and sung some one which I liked better because it affected me less. At this day I am in possession of Irish airs, which none of our best antiquaries in Irish music have heard, except through me, and of which neither they nor I myself know the names.
Such, gentle reader, were my humble parents, under whose untaught, but natural genius, setting all other advantages aside, it is not to be wondered at that my heart should have been so completely moulded into that spirit and, those feelings which characterize my country and her children.
These, however, were my domestic advantages; but I now come to others, which arose from my position in life as the son of a man who was one of the people. My father, at the farthest point to which my memory goes back, lived in a townland called Prillisk, in the parish of Clogher, and county of Tyrone; and I only remember living there in a cottage. From that the family removed to a place called Tonagh, or, more familiarly, Towney, about an English mile from Prillisk. It was here I first went to school to a Connaught-man named Pat Frayne, who, however, remained there only for a very short period in the neighborhood. Such was the neglected state of education at that time, that for a year or two afterwards there was no school sufficiently near to which I could be sent. At length it was ascertained that a master, another Connaught-man by the way, named O'Beirne, had opened a school—a hedge-school of course—at Pindramore. To this I was sent, along with my brother John, the youngest of the family next to myself. I continued with him for about a year and a half, when who should return to our neighborhood but Pat Frayne, the redoubtable prototype of Mat Kavanagh in “The Hedge School.” O'Beirne, it is true, was an excellent specimen of the hedge-schoolmaster, but nothing at all to be compared to Frayne. About the period I write of, there was no other description of school to which any one could be sent, and the consequence was, that rich and poor (I speak of the peasantry), Protestant and Catholic, Presbyterian and Methodist, boys and girls, were all congregated under the same roof, to the amount of from a hundred to a hundred and fifty, or two hundred. In this school I remained for about a year or two, when our family removed to a place called Nurchasy, the property of the Rev. Dr. Story, of Corick. Of us, however, he neither could nor did know anything, for we were under-tenants, our immediate landlord being no less a person than Hugh Traynor, then so famous for the distillation, sub rosa, of exquisite mountain dew, and to whom the reader will find allusions made in that capacity more than once in the following volume. Nurchasy was within about half a mile of Findramore, to which school, under O'Beirne, I was again sent. Here I continued, until a classical teacher came to a place called Tulnavert, now the property of John Birney, Esq., of Lisburn, to whom I had the pleasure of dedicating the two first volumes of my “Traits and Stories.” This tyrannical blockhead, whose name I do not choose to mention, instead of being allowed to teach classics, ought to have been put into a strait-waistcoat or the stocks, and either whipped once in every twenty-four hours, or kept in a madhouse until the day of his death. He had been a student in Maynooth, where he became deranged, and was, of course, sent home to his friends, with whom he recovered sufficiently to become cruel and hypocritical, to an extent which I have never yet seen equalled. Whenever the son of a rich man committed an offence, he would grind his teeth and growl like a tiger, but in no single instance had he the moral courage or sense of justice to correct him. On the contrary, he uniformly “nursed his wrath to keep it warm,” until the son of a poor man transgressed, and on his unfortunate body he was sure to wreak signal vengeance for the stupidity or misconduct of the wealthy blockhead. This was his system, and my readers may form some opinion of the low ebb at which knowledge and moral feeling were at the time, when I assure them, that not one of the humbler boys durst make a complaint against the scoundrel at home, unless under the certainty of being well flogged for their pains. A hedge-schoolmaster was then held in such respect and veneration, that no matter how cruel or profligate he might be, his person and character, unless in some extraordinary case of cruelty, resulting in death or mutilation, were looked upon as free from all moral or legal responsibility. This certainly was not the fault of the people, but of those laws, which, by making education a crime, generated ignorance, and then punished it for violating them.
For the present it is enough to say, that a most interesting child, a niece of my own, lost her life by the severity of Pat Frayne, the Connaught-man. In a fit of passion he caught the poor girl by the ear, which he nearly plucked out of her head. The violence of the act broke some of the internal muscles or tendons,—suppuration and subsequently inflammation, first of the adjoining Parts and afterwards of the brain, took place, and the fine intelligent little creature was laid in a premature grave, because the ignorance of the people justified a pedantic hedge-schoolmaster in the exercise of irresponsible cruelty. Frayne was never prosecuted, neither was the classical despot, who by the way sits for the picture of the fellow in whose school, and at whose hands, the Poor Scholar receives the tyrannical and heartless treatment mentioned in that tale. Many a time the cruelty exercised towards that unhappy boy, whose name was Qum, has wrung my heart and brought the involuntary tears to my eyes,—tears which I was forced to conceal, being very well assured from experience, that any sympathy of mine, if noticed, would be certain to procure me or any other friend of his, an ample participation in his punishment. He was, in truth, the scape-goat of the school, and it makes my blood boil, even whilst I write, to think how the poor friendless lad, far removed from either father or mother, was kicked, and cuffed, and beaten on the naked head, with a kind of stick between a horse-rod and a cudgel, until his poor face got pale, and he was forced to totter over to a seat in order to prevent himself from fainting or falling in consequence of severe pain.
At length, however, the inhuman villain began to find, when it was too late, that his ferocity, in spite of the terror which it occasioned, was soon likely to empty his school. He now became as fawning and slavish as he had before been insolent and savage; but the wealthy farmers of the neighborhood, having now full cognizance of his conduct, made common cause with the poorer men whose children were so shamefully treated, and the result was, that in about six weeks they forced him to leave that part of the country for want of scholars, having been literally groaned out of it by the curses and indignation of all who knew him.
Here then was I once more at a loss for a school, and I must add, in no disposition at all to renew my acquaintance with literature. Our family had again removed from Nurchasy, to a place up nearer the mountains, called Springtown, on the northern side of the parish. I was now about fourteen, and began to feel a keen relish for all the sports and amusements of the country, into which I entered with a spirit of youth and enthusiasm rarely equalled. For about two years I attended no school, but it was during this period that I received, notwithstanding, the best part of my education. Our farm in Springtown was about sixteen or eighteen acres, and I occasionally assisted the family in working at it, but never regularly, for I was not called upon to do so, nor would I have been permitted even had I wished it. It was about six months after our removal to Springtown, that an incident in my early life occurred which gave rise to one of the most popular tales perhaps, with the exception of “The Miser,” that I have written—that is “The Poor Scholar.” There being now no classical school within eighteen or twenty miles of Springtown, it was suggested to our family by a nephew of the parish priest, then a young man of six or eight and twenty, that, under the circumstances, it would be a prudent step on their part to prepare an outfit, and send me up to Munster as a poor scholar, to complete my education. Pat Frayne, who by the way had been a poor scholar himself, had advised the same thing before, and as the name does not involve disgrace I felt no reluctance in going, especially as the priest's nephew, who proposed it, had made up his mind on accompanying me for a similar purpose. Indeed, the poor scholars who go to Munster are indebted for nothing but their bed and board, which they receive kindly and hospitably from the parents of the scholars. The masters are generally paid their full terms by these pitiable beings, but this rule, like all others, of course, has its exceptions. At all events, my outfit was got ready, and on a beautiful morning in the month of May I separated from my family to go in quest of education. There was no collection, however, in my case, as mentioned in the tale; as my own family supplied the funds supposed to be necessary. I have been present, however, at more than one collection made for similar purposes, and heard a good-natured sermon not very much differing from that given in the story.
The priest's nephew, on the day we were to start, suddenly changed his mind, and I consequently had to undertake the journey alone, which I did with a heavy heart. The farther I got from home, the more my spirits sank, or in the beautiful image of Goldsmith,
“I dragged at each remove a lengthening chain.”
I travelled as far as the town of Granard, and during the journey, it is scarcely necessary to say, that the almost parental tenderness and hospitality which I received on my way could not be adequately described. The reader will find an attempt at it in the story. The parting from home and my adventures on the road are real.
Having reached Granard my courage began to fail, and my family at home, now that I had departed from them, began also to feel something like remorse for having permitted one so young and inexperienced as I then was, to go abroad alone upon the world. My mother's sorrow, especially, was deep, and her cry was, “Oh, why did I let my boy go? maybe I will never see him again!”
At this time, as the reader may be aware from my parental education, there was not a being alive more thoroughly imbued with superstition; and, whether for good or ill, at all events that superstition returned me to my family. On reaching Granard, I felt, of course, fatigued, and soon went to bed, where I slept soundly. It was not, however, a dreamless sleep: I thought I was going along a strange path to some particular place, and that a mad bull met me on the road, and pursued me with such speed and fury that I awoke in a state of singular terror. That was sufficient; my mind had been already wavering, and the dream determined me. The next morning after breakfast I bent my steps homewards, and, as it happened, my return took a weighty load of bitter grief from the heart of my mother and family. The house I stopped at in Granard was a kind of small inn, kept by a man whose name was Peter Grehan. Such were the incidents which gave rise to the tale of “The Poor Scholar.”
I was now growing up fast, and began to feel a boyish ambition of associating with, those who were older and bigger than myself. Although miserably deficient in education—for I had been well beaten but never taught—yet I was looked upon as a prodigy of knowledge; and I can assure the reader that I took very good care not to dispel that agreeable delusion. Indeed, at this time, I was as great a young literary coxcomb as ever lived, my vanity being high and inflated exactly in proportion to my ignorance, which was also of the purest water. This vanity, however, resulted as much from my position and circumstances as from any strong disposition to be vain on my part. It was generated by the ignorance of the people, and their extreme veneration for any thing in the shape of superior knowledge. In fact, they insisted that I knew every earthly subject, because I had been a couple of years at Latin, and was designed for a priest. It was useless to undeceive men who would not be convinced, so I accordingly gave them, as they say, “the length of their tether;” nay, to such, purpose did I ply them with proofs of it, that my conversation soon became as fine a specimen of pedantic bombast as ever was uttered. Not a word under six feet could come out of my lips, even of English; but as the best English, after all, is but commonplace, I peppered them with vile Latin, and an occasional verse in Greek, from St. John's Gospel, which I translated for them into a wrong meaning, with an air of lofty superiority that made them turn up their eyes with wonder. I was then, however, but one of a class which still exists, and will continue to do so until a better informed generation shall prevent those who compose it from swaggering about in all the pompous pride of young impostors, who boast of knowing “the seven languages.” The reader will find an illustration of this in the sketch of “Denis O'Shaughnessy going to Maynooth.”
In the meantime, I was unconsciously but rapidly preparing myself for a position in Irish literature, which I little dreamt I should ever occupy. I now mingled in the sports and pastimes of the people, until indulgence in them became the predominant passion of mv youth. Throwing the stone, wrestling, leaping, foot-ball, and every other description of athletic exercise filled up the measure of my early happiness. I attended every wake, dance, fair, and merry-making in the neighborhood, and became so celebrated for dancing hornpipes, jigs, and reels, that I was soon without a rival in the parish.
This kind of life, though very delightful to a boy of my years, was not, however, quite satisfactory, as it afforded me no ultimate prospect, and the death of my father had occasioned the circumstances of the family to decline. I heard, about this time, that a distant relative of mine, a highly respectable priest, had opened a classical school near Glasslough, in the county of Monaghan. To him I accordingly went, mentioned our affinity, and had my claims allowed. I attended his school with intermission for about two years, at the expiration of which period I once more returned to our family, who were then very much reduced.
I was now about nineteen, strong, active, and could leap two-and-twenty feet on a dead level; but though thoroughly acquainted with Irish life among my own class, I was as ignorant of the world as a child. Ever since my boyhood, in consequence of the legends which I had heard from my father, about the far-famed Lough-derg, or St. Patrick's Purgatory, I felt my imagination fired with a romantic curiosity to perform a station at that celebrated place. I accordingly did so, and the description of that most penal performance, some years afterwards, not only constituted my debut in literature, but was also the means of preventing me from being a pleasant, strong-bodied parish priest at this day; indeed, it was the cause of changing the whole destiny of my subsequent life.
“The Loughderg Pilgrim” is given in the present edition, and may be relied on, not so much as an ordinary narrative, as a perfect transcript of what takes place during the stations which are held there in the summer months.
Having returned from this, I knew not exactly how to dispose of myself. On one thing I was determined—never to enter the Church;—but this resolution I kept faithfully to myself. I had nothing for it now but to forget my sacerdotal prospects, which, as I have said, had already been renounced, or to sink down as many others like me had done, into a mere tiller of the earth,—a character in Ireland far more unpopular than that which the Scotch call “a sticket minister!”
It was about this period, that chance first threw the inimitable Adventures of the renowned Gil Bias across my path. During my whole life I had been an insatiable reader of such sixpenny romances and history-books as the hedge-schools afforded. Many a time have I given up my meals rather than lose one minute from the interest excited by the story I was perusing. Having read Gil Bias, however, I felt an irrepressible passion for adventure, which nothing could divert; in fact, I was as much the creature of the impulse it excited, as the ship is of the helmsman, or the steam-engine of the principle that guides it.
Stimulated by this romantic love of adventure, I left my native place, and directed my steps to the parish of Killanny, in the county of Louth, the Catholic clergyman of which was a nephew of our own Parish Priest, brother to him who proposed going to Munster with me, and an old school-fellow of my own, though probably twenty years my senior. This man's residence was within a quarter or half a mile's distance of the celebrated Wild-goose Lodge, in which, some six months before, a whole family, consisting of, I believe, eight persons, men, women, and children, had been, from motives of personal vengeance, consumed to ashes. I stopped with him for a fortnight, and succeeded in procuring a tuition in the house of a wealthy farmer named Piers Murphy, near Corcreagh. This, however, was a tame life, and a hard one, so I resolved once more to give up a miserable salary and my board, for the fortunate chances which an ardent temperament and a strong imagination perpetually suggested to me as likely to be evolved out of the vicissitudes of life. Urged on, therefore, by a spirit of romance, I resolved to precipitate myself on the Irish Metropolis, which I accordingly entered with two shillings and ninepence in my pocket; an utter stranger, of course friendless; ignorant of the world, without aim or object, but not without a certain strong feeling of vague and shapeless ambition, for the truth was I had not yet begun to think, and, consequently, looked upon life less as a reality than a vision.
Thus have I, as a faithful, but I fear a dull guide, conducted my reader from the lowly cottage in Prillisk, where I first drew my breath, along those tangled walks and green lanes which are familiar to the foot of the peasant alone, until I enter upon the highways of the world, and strike into one of its greatest and most crowded thoroughfares—the Metropolis. Whether this brief sketch of my early and humble life, my education, my sports, my hopes and struggles, be calculated to excite any particular interest, I know not; I can only assure my reader that the details, so far as they go, are scrupulously correct and authentic, and that they never would have been obtruded upon him, were it not from an anxiety to satisfy him that in undertaking to describe the Irish peasantry as they are, I approach the difficult task with advantages of knowing them, which perhaps few Irish writers ever possessed; and this is the only merit which I claim.
A few words now upon the moral and physical condition of the people may not be unsuitable before I close, especially for the sake of those who may wish to acquire a knowledge of their general character, previous to their perusal of the following volume. This task, it is true, is not one of such difficulty now as it was some years ago. Much light has been thrown on the Irish character, not only by the great names I have already enumerated, but by some equally high which I have omitted. On this subject it would be impossible to overlook the names of Lever, Maxwell, or Otway, or to forget the mellow hearth-light and chimney-corner tone, the happy dialogue and legendary truth which characterize the exquisite fairy legends of Crofton Croker. Much of the difficulty of the task, I say, has been removed by these writers, but there remains enough still behind to justify me in giving a short dissertation upon the habits and feelings of my countrymen.
Of those whose physical state has been and is so deplorably wretched, it may not be supposed that the tone of morals can be either high or pure; and yet if we consider the circumstance in which he has been for such a lengthened period placed, it is undeniable that the Irishman is a remarkably moral man. Let us suppose, for instance, that in England and Scotland the great body of the people had for a couple or three centuries never received an adequate or proper education: in that case, let us ask what the moral aspect of society in either country would be to-day? But this is not merely the thing to be considered. The Irishman was not only not educated, but actually punished for attempting to acquire knowledge in the first place, and in the second, punished also for the ignorance created by its absence. In other words, the penal laws rendered education criminal, and then caused the unhappy people to suffer for the crimes which proper knowledge would have prevented them from, committing. It was just like depriving a man of his sight, and afterwards causing him to be punished for stumbling. It is beyond all question, that from the time of the wars of Elizabeth and the introduction of the Reformation, until very recently, there was no fixed system of wholesome education in the country. The people, possessed of strong political and religious prejudices, were left in a state of physical destitution and moral ignorance, such as were calculated to produce ten times the amount of crime which was committed. Is it any wonder, then, that in such a condition, social errors and dangerous theories should be generated, and that neglect, and poverty, and ignorance combined should give to the country a character for turbulence and outrage? The same causes will produce the same effects in any country, and were it not that the standard of personal and domestic comfort was so low in Ireland, there is no doubt that the historian would have a much darker catalogue of crime to record than he has. The Irishman, in fact, was mute and patient under circumstances which would have driven the better fed and more comfortable Englishman into open outrage and contempt of all authority. God forbid that I for a moment should become the apologist of crime, much less the crimes of my countrymen! but it is beyond all question that the principles upon which the country was governed have been such as to leave down to the present day many of their evil consequences behind them. The penal code, to be sure, is now abolished, but so are not many of its political effects among the people. Its consequences have not yet departed from the country, nor has the hereditary hatred of the laws, which unconsciously descended from father to son, ceased to regulate their conduct and opinions. Thousands of them are ignorant that ever such a thing as a penal code existed; yet the feeling against law survives, although the source from which it has been transmitted may be forgotten. This will easily account for much of the political violence and crime which moments of great excitement produce among us; nor need we feel surprised that this state of things should be continued, to the manifest injury of the people themselves, by the baneful effects of agitation.
The period, therefore, for putting the character of our country fairly upon, its trial has not yet arrived; although we are willing to take the Irishman as we find him; nor would we shrink even at the present moment from comparing him with any of his neighbors. His political sins and their consequences were left him as an heirloom, and result from a state of things which he himself did not occasion. Setting these aside, where is the man to be found in any country who has carried with him through all his privations and penalties so many of the best virtues of our nature? In other countries the man who commits a great crime is always a great criminal, and the whole heart is hardened and debased, but it is not so in Ireland. The agrarian and political outrage is often perpetrated by men who possess the best virtues of humanity, and whose hearts as individuals actually abhor the crime. The moral standard here is no doubt dreadfully erroneous, and until a correct and Christian one, emanating from a better system of education, shall be substituted for it, it will, with a people who so think and feel, be impossible utterly to prevent the occurrence of these great evils. We must wait for thirty or forty years, that is, until the rising or perhaps the subsequent generation shall be educated out of these wild and destructive prejudices, before we can fully estimate the degree of excellence to which our national character may arrive. In my own youth, and I am now only forty-four years, I do not remember a single school under the immediate superintendence of either priest or parson, and that in a parish the extent of which is, I dare say, ten miles by eight. The instruction of the children was altogether a matter in which no clergy of any creed took an interest. This was left altogether to hedge schoolmasters, a class of men who, with few exceptions, bestowed such an education upon the people as is sufficient almost, in the absence of all other causes, to account for much of the agrarian violence and erroneous principles which regulate their movements and feelings on that and similar subjects. For further information on this matter the reader is referred to the “Hedge School.”
With respect to these darker shades of the Irish character, I feel that, consistently with that love of truth and impartiality which has guided, and I trust ever shall guide, my pen, I could not pass them over without further notice. I know that it is a very questionable defence to say that some, if not principally all, of their crimes originate in agrarian or political vengeance. Indeed, I believe that, so far from this circumstance being looked upon as a defence, it ought to be considered as an aggravation of the guilt; inasmuch as it is, beyond all doubt, at least a far more manly thing to inflict an injury upon an enemy face to face, and under the influence of immediate resentment, than to crouch like a cowardly assassin behind a hedge and coolly murder him without one moment's preparation, or any means whatsoever of defence. This is a description of crime which no man with one generous drop of blood in his veins can think of without shame and indignation. Unhappily, however, for the security of human life, every crime of the kind results more from the dark tyranny of these secret confederacies, by which the lower classes are organized, than from any natural appetite for shedding blood. Individually, the Irish loathe murder as much as any people in the world; but in the circumstances before us, it often happens that the Irishman is not a free agent—very far from it: on the contrary, he is frequently made the instrument of a system, to which he must become either an obedient slave or a victim.
Even here, however, although nothing can or ought to be said to palliate the cowardly and unmanly crime of assassination, yet something can certainly be advanced to account for the state of feeling by which, from time to time, and by frequent occurrence, it came to be so habitual among the people, that by familiarity it became stripped of its criminality and horror.
Now it is idle, and it would be dishonest, to deny the fact, that the lower Irish, until a comparatively recent period, were treated with apathy and gross neglect by the only class to whom they could or ought to look up for sympathy or protection. The conferring of the elective franchise upon the forty-shilling freeholders, or in other words upon paupers, added to the absence of proper education, or the means of acquiring it, generated, by the fraudulent subdivision of small holdings, by bribery, perjury, and corruption, a state of moral feeling among the poorer classes which could not but be productive of much crime. And yet, notwithstanding this shameful prostitution of their morals and comfort, for the purposes of political ambition or personal aggrandizement, they were in general a peaceable and enduring people; and it was only when some act of unjustifiable severity, or oppression in the person of a middleman, agent, or hardhearted landlord, drove them houseless upon the world, that they fell back upon the darker crimes of which I am speaking. But what, I ask, could be expected from such a state of things? And who generated it? It is not, indeed, to be wondered at that a set of men, who so completely neglected their duties as the old landlords of Ireland did, should have the very weapons turned against themselves which their own moral profligacy first put into the hands of those whom they corrupted. Up to this day the peasantry are charged with indifference to the obligation of an oath, and in those who still have anything to do in elections, I fear with too much truth. But then let us inquire who first trained and familiarized them to it? Why, the old landlords of Ireland; and now their descendants, and such of themselves as survive, may behold, in the crimes which disgrace the country, the disastrous effects of a bad system created by their forefathers or themselves.
In the meantime, I have no doubt that by the removal of the causes which produced this deplorable state of things, their disastrous effects will also soon disappear. That the present landlords of Ireland are, with the ordinary number of exceptions, a very different class of men from those who have gone before them, is a fact which will ultimately tell for the peace and prosperity of the country. Let the ignorance of the people, or rather the positive bad knowledge with which, as to a sense of civil duties, their minds are filled, be removed, and replaced with principles of a higher and more Christian tendency. Let the Irish landlords consider the interests of their tenantry as their own, and there is little doubt that with the aids of science, agricultural improvement, and the advantages of superior machinery, the Irish will become a prosperous, contented, and great people.
It is not just to the general character of our people, however, to speak of these crimes as national; for, in fact, they are not so. If Tipperary and some of the adjoining parts of Munster were blotted out of the moral map of the country, we would stand as a nation in a far higher position than that which we occupy in the opinion of our neighbors. This is a distinction which in justice to us ought to be made, for it is surely unfair to charge the whole kingdom with the crimes which disgrace only a single county of it, together with a few adjacent districts—allowing, of course, for some melancholy exceptions in other parts.
Having now discussed, with, I think, sufficient candor and impartiality, that portion of our national character which appears worst and weakest in the eyes of our neighbors, and attempted to show that pre-existing circumstances originating from an unwise policy had much to do in calling into existence and shaping its evil impulses, I come now to a more agreeable task—the consideration, of our social and domestic virtues. And here it is where the Irishman immeasurably outstrips all competitors. His hospitality is not only a habit but a principle; and indeed of such a quick and generous temperament is he, that in ninety cases out of a hundred the feeling precedes the reflection, which in others prompts the virtue. To be a stranger and friendless, or suffering hunger and thirst, is at any time a sufficient passport to his heart and purse; but it is not merely the thing or virtue, but also his manner of doing it, that constitutes the charm which runs through his conduct. There is a natural politeness and sincerity in his manner which no man can mistake; and it is a fact, the truth of which I have felt a thousand times, that he will make you feel the acceptance of the favor of kindness he bestows to be a compliment to himself rather than to you. The delicate ingenuity with which he diminishes the nature or amount of his own kindness, proves that he is no common man, either in heart or intellect; and when all fails he will lie like Lucifer himself, and absolutely seduce you into an acceptance of his hospitality or assistance. I speak now exclusively of the peasantry. Certainly in domestic life there is no man so exquisitely affectionate and humanized as the Irishman. The national imagination is active and the national heart warm, and it follows very naturally that he should be, and is, tender and strong in all his domestic relations. Unlike the people of other nations, his grief is loud but lasting, vehement but deep; and whilst its shadow has been chequered by the laughter and mirth of a cheerful disposition, still in the moments of seclusion, at his bedside prayer, or over the grave of those he loved, it will put itself forth after half a life with a vivid power of recollection which is sometimes almost beyond belief.
The Irish, however, are naturally a refined people; but by this I mean the refinement which appreciates and cherishes whatever there is in nature, as manifested through the influence of the softer arts of music and poetry. The effect of music upon the Irish heart I ought to know well, and no man need tell me that a barbarous or cruel people ever possessed national music that was beautiful and pathetic. The music of any nation is the manifestation of its general feeling, and not that which creates it; although there is no doubt but the one when formed perpetuates and reproduces the other. It is no wonder, then, that the domestic feelings of the Irish should be so singularly affectionate and strong, when we consider that they have been, in spite of every obstruction, kept under the softening influence of music and poetry. This music and poetry, too, essentially their own—and whether streaming of a summer through their still glens, or poured forth at the winter hearth, still, by its soft and melancholy spirit, stirring up a thousand tender associations that must necessarily touch and improve the heart. And it is for this reason that, that heart becomes so remarkably eloquent, if not poetical, when moved by sorrow. Many a time I have seen a Keener commence her wail over the corpse of a near relative, and by degrees she has risen from the simple wail or cry to a high but mournful recitative, extemporized, under the excitement of the moment, into sentiments that were highly figurative and impressive. In this she was aided very much by the genius of the language, which possesses the finest and most copious vocabulary in the world for the expression of either sorrow or love.
It has been said that the Irish, notwithstanding a deep susceptibility of sorrow, are a light-hearted people; and this is strictly true. What, however, is the one fact but a natural consequence of the other? No man for instance ever possessed a higher order of humor, whose temperament was not naturally melancholy, and no country in the world more clearly establishes that point than Ireland. Here the melancholy and mirth are not simply in a proximate state, but frequently flash together, and again separate so quickly, that the alternation or blending, as the case may be, whilst it is felt by the spectators, yet stands beyond all known rules of philosophy to solve it. Any one at all acquainted with Ireland, knows that in no country is mirth lighter, or sorrow deeper, or the smile and the tear seen more frequently on the face at the same moment. Their mirth, however, is not levity, nor their sorrow gloom; and for this reason none of those dreary and desponding reactions take place, which, as in France especially, so frequently terminate in suicide.
The recreations of the Irish were very varied and some of them of a highly intellectual cast. These latter, however, have altogether disappeared from the country, or at all events are fast disappearing. The old Harper is now hardly seen; the Senachie, where he exists, is but a dim and faded representative of that very old Chronicler in his palmy days; and the Prophecy-man unfortunately has survived the failure of his best and most cherished predictions. The poor old Prophet's stock in trade is nearly exhausted, and little now remains but the slaughter which is to take place at the mill of Louth, when human blood, and the miller to have six fingers and two thumbs on each hand, as a collateral prognostication of that bloody event.
The amusement derived from these persons was undoubtedly of a very imaginative character, and gives sufficient proof, that had the national intellect been duly cultivated, it is difficult to say in what position as a literary country Ireland might have stood at this day. At present the national recreations, though still sufficiently varied and numerous are neither so strongly marked nor diversified as formerly. Fun, or the love of it, to be sure, is an essential principle in the Irish character; and nothing that can happen, no matter how solemn or how sorrowful it may be, is allowed to proceed without it. In Ireland the house of death is sure to be the merriest one in the neighborhood; but here the mirth is kindly and considerately introduced, from motives of sympathy—in other words, for the alleviation of the mourners' sorrow. The same thing may be said of its association with religion. Whoever has witnessed a Station in Ireland made at some blessed lake or holy well, will understand this. At such places it is quite usual to see young men and women devoutly circumambulating the well or lake on their bare knees, with all the marks of penitence and contrition strongly impressed upon their faces; whilst again, after an hour or two, the same individuals may be found in a tent dancing with ecstatic vehemence to the music of the bagpipe or fiddle.
All these things, however, will be found, I trust I may say faithfully depicted in the following volume—together with many other important features of our general character; which I would dwell on here, were it not that they are detailed very fully in other parts of my works, and I do not wish to deprive them of the force of novelty when they occur, nor to appear heavy by repetition.
In conclusion, I have endeavored, with what success has been already determined by the voice of my own country, to give a panorama of Irish life among the people—comprising at one view all the strong points of their general character—their loves, sorrows, superstitions, piety, amusements, crimes, and virtues; and in doing this, I can say with solemn truth that I painted them honestly, and without reference to the existence of any particular creed or party.
W. Carleton.
Dublin.
NED M'KEOWN.
Ned M'Keown's house stood exactly in an angle, formed by the cross-roads of Kilrudden. It was a long, whitewashed building, well thatched and furnished with the usual appurtenances of yard and offices. Like most Irish houses of the better sort, it had two doors, one opening into a garden that sloped down from the rear in a southern direction. The barn was a continuation of the dwelling-house, and might be distinguished from it by a darker shade of color, being only rough-cast. It was situated on a small eminence, but, with respect to the general locality of the country, in a delightful vale, which runs up, for twelve or fourteen miles, between two ranges of dark, well-defined mountains, that give to the interjacent country the form of a low inverted arch. This valley, which altogether, allowing for the occasional breaks and intersections of hill-ranges, extends upwards of thirty miles in length, is the celebrated valley of the “Black Pig,” so well known in the politico-traditional history of Ireland, and the legends connected with the famous Beal Dearg.*
* The following extract, taken from a sketch by the author
called “The Irish Prophecy-man,” contains a very appropriate
illustration of the above passage. “I have a little book
that contains a prophecy of the milk-white hind an' the
bloody panther, an' a foreboding of the slaughter there's to
be in the Valley of the Black Pig, as foretould by Beal
Derg, or the prophet wid the red mouth, who never was known
to speak but when he prophesied, or to prophesy but when he
spoke.”
“The Lord bless an' keep us!—an' why was he called the Man
with the Red Mouth, Barney?”
“I'll tell you that: first, bekase he always prophesied
about the slaughter an' fightin' that was to take place in
the time to come; an', secondly, bekase, while he spoke, the
red blood always trickled out of his mouth, as a proof that
what he foretould was true.”
“Glory be to God! but that's wondherful all out. Well,
we'll!”
“Ay, an' Beal Deig, or the Red Mouth, is still livin'.”
“Livin! why, is he a man of our own time?”
“Our own time! The Lord help you! It's more than a thousand
years since he made the prophecy. The case you see is this:
he an' the ten thousand witnesses are lyin' in an enchanted
sleep in one of the Montherlony mountains.”
“An' how is that known, Barney?”
“It's known, Every night at a certain hour one of the
witnesses—an' they're all sogers, by the way—must come out
to look for the sign that's to come.”
“An' what is that, Barney?”
“It's the fiery cross; an' when he sees one on aich of the
four mountains of the north, he's to know that the same
sign's abroad in all the other parts of the kingdom. Beal
Derg an' his men are then to waken up, an' by their aid the
Valley of the Black Pig is to be set free forever.”
“An' what is the Black Pig, Barney?”
“The Prospitarian church, that stretches from Enniskillen to
Darry, an' back again from Darry to Enniskillen.”
“Well, well, Barney, but prophecy is a strange thing, to be
sure! Only think of men livin' a thousand years!”
“Every night one of Beal Derg's men must go to the mouth of
the cave, which opens of itself, an' then look out for the
sign that's expected. He walks up to the top of the
mountain, an' turns to the four corners of the heavens, to
thry if he can see it; an' when he finds that he cannot, he
goes back to Beal Derg. who, afther the other touches him,
starts up and axis him, 'Is the time come?' He replies, 'No;
the man is, but the hour is not!' an' that instant
they're both asleep again. Now, you see, while the soger is
on the mountain top, the mouth of the cave is open, an' any
one may go in that might happen to see it. One man it
appears did, an' wishin' to know from curiosity whether the
sogers were dead or livin', he touched one of them wid his
hand, who started up an' axed him the same question, 'Is the
time come?' Very fortunately he said, 'No;' an' that minute
the soger was as sound in his trance as before.”
“An', Barney, what did the soger mane when he said. 'The man
is, but the hour is not?'”
“What did he mane? I'll tell you that. The man is
Bonyparty, which manes, when put into proper explanation,
the right side; that is, the true cause. Larned men have
found that out.”
That part of it where Ned M'Keown resided was peculiarly beautiful and romantic. From the eminence on which the house stood, a sweep of the most fertile meadowland stretched away to the foot of a series of intermingled hills and vales, which bounded this extensive carpet towards the north. Through these meadows ran a smooth river, called the Mullin-burn, which wound its way through them with such tortuosity, that it was proverbial in the neighborhood to say of any man remarkable for dishonesty, “He's as crooked as the Mullin-burn,” an epithet which was sometimes, although unjustly, jocularly applied to Ned himself. This deep but narrow river had its origin in the glens and ravines of a mountain which bounded the vale in a south-eastern direction; and after sudden and heavy rains it tumbled down with such violence and impetuosity over the crags and rock-ranges in its way, and accumulated so amazingly, that on reaching the meadows it inundated their surface, carrying away sheep, cows, and cocks of hay upon its yellow flood. It also boiled and eddied, and roared with a hoarse sugh, that was heard at a considerable distance.
On the north-west side ran a ridge of high hills, with the cloud-capped peek of Knockmany rising in lofty eminence above them; these, as they extended towards the south, became gradually deeper in their hue, until at length they assumed the shape and form of heath-clad mountains, dark and towering. The prospect on either range is highly pleasing, and capable of being compared with any I have ever seen, in softness, variety, and that serene lustre which reposes only on the surface of a country rich in the beauty of fertility, and improved, by the hand of industry and taste. Opposite Knockmany, at a distance of about four miles, on the south-eastern side, rose the huge and dark outline of Cullimore, standing out in gigantic relief against the clear blue of a summer sky, and flinging down his frowning and haughty shadow almost to the firm-set base of his lofty rival; or, in winter, wrapped in a mantle of clouds, and crowned with unsullied snow, reposing in undisturbed tranquillity, whilst the loud voice of storms howled around him.
To the northward, immediately behind Cullimore, lies Althadhawan, a deep, craggy, precipitous glen, running up to its very base, and wooded with oak, hazel, rowan-tree, and holly. This picturesque glen extends two or three miles, until it melts into the softness of grove and meadow, in the rich landscape below. Then, again, on the opposite side, is Lumford's Glen, with its overhanging rocks, whose yawning depth and silver waterfall, of two hundred feet, are at once finely and fearfully contrasted with the elevated peak of Knockmany, rising into the clouds above it.
From either side of these mountains may be seen six or eight country towns—the beautiful grouping of hill and plain, lake, river, grove, and dell—the reverend cathedral (of Clogher)—the white-washed cottage, and the comfortable farm-house. To these may be added the wild upland and the cultivated demesne, the green sheep-walk, the dark moor, the splendid mansion, and ruined castle of former days. Delightful remembrance! Many a day, both of sunshine and storm, have I, in the strength and pride of happy youth, bounded, fleet as the mountain foe, over these blue hills! Many an evening, as the yellow beams of the setting sun shot slantingly, like rafters of gold, across the depth of this blessed and peaceful valley, have I followed, in solitude, the impulses of a wild and wayward fancy, and sought the quiet dell, or viewed the setting sun, as he scattered his glorious and shining beams through the glowing foliage of the trees, in the vista, where I stood; or wandered along the river whose banks were fringed with the hanging willow, whilst I listened to the thrush singing among the hazels that crowned the sloping green above me, or watched the splashing otter, as he ventured from the dark angles and intricacies of the upland glen, to seek his prey in the meadow-stream during the favorable dusk of twilight. Many a time have I heard the simple song of Roger M'Cann, coming from the top of brown Dunroe, mellowed, by the stillness of the hour, to something far sweeter to the heart than all that the labored pomp of musical art and science can effect; or the song of Katty Roy, the beauty of the village, streaming across the purple-flowered moor,
“Sweet as the shepherd's pipe upon the mountains.”
Many a time, too, have I been gratified, in the same poetical hour, by the sweet sound of honest Ned M'Keown's ungreased cartwheels, clacking, when nature seemed to have fallen asleep after the day-stir and animation of rural business—for Ned was sometimes a carman—on his return from Dublin with a load of his own groceries, without as much money in his pocket as would purchase oil wherewith to silence the sounds which the friction produced—regaling his own ears the while, as well as the music of the cart would permit his melody to be heard, with his favorite tune of Cannie Soogah.*
* “The Jolly Pedlar,”—a fine old Irish air.
Honest, blustering, good-humored Ned was the indefatigable merchant of the village; ever engaged in some ten or twenty pound speculation, the capital of which he was sure to extort, perhaps for the twelfth time, from the savings of Nancy's frugality, by the equivocal test of a month or six weeks' consecutive sobriety, and which said speculation he never failed to wind up by the total loss of the capital for Nancy, and the capital loss of a broken head for himself. Ned had eternally some bargain on his hands: at one time you might see him a yarn-merchant, planted in the next market-town upon the upper step of Mr. Birney's hall-door, where the yarn-market was held, surrounded by a crowd of eager country-women, anxious to give Ned the preference, first, because he was a well-wisher; secondly, because he hadn't his heart in the penny; and thirdly, because he gave sixpence a spangle more than any other man in the market.
There might Ned be found; with his twenty pounds of hard silver jingling in the bottom of a green bag, as a decoy to his customers, laughing loud as he piled the yarn in and ostentatious heap, which in the pride of his commercial sagacity, he had purchased at a dead loss. Again you might see him at a horse-fair, cantering about on the back of some sleek but broken-winded jade, with spavined legs, imposed on him as “a great bargain entirely,” by the superior cunning of some rustic sharper; or standing over a hogshead of damaged flaxseed, in the purchase of which he shrewdly suspected himself of having overreached the seller—by allowing him for it a greater price than the prime seed of the market would have cost tim. In short, Ned was never out of a speculation, and whatever he undertook was sure to prove a complete failure. But he had one mode of consolation, which consisted in sitting down with the fag-end of Nancy's capital in his pocket, and drinking night and day with this neighbor and that, whilst a shilling remained; and when he found himself at the end of his tether, he was sure to fasten a quarrel on some friend or acquaintance, and to get his head broken for his pains.
None of all this blustering, however, happened within the range of Nancy's jurisdiction. Ned, indeed, might drink and sing, and swagger and fight—and he contrived to do so; but notwithstanding all his apparent courage, there was one eye which made him quail, and before which he never put on the hector;—there was one, in whose presence the loudness of his song would fall away into a very awkward and unmusical quaver, and under whose glance his laughing face often changed to the visage of a man who is disposed to anything but mirth.
The fact was this: Whenever Ned found that his speculation was gone a shaughran, (*Gone astray) as he termed it, he fixed himself in some favorite public house, from whence he seldom stirred while his money lasted, except when dislodged by Nancy, who usually, upon learning where he had taken cover, paid him an unceremonious visit, to which Ned's indefensible delinquency gave the color of legitimate authority. Upon these occasions, Nancy, accompanied by two sturdy “servant-boys,” would sally forth to the next market-town, for the purpose of bringing home “graceless Ned,” as she called him. And then you might see Ned between the two servants, a few paces in advance of Nancy, having very much the appearance of a man performing a pilgrimage to the gallows, or of a deserter guarded back to his barrack, in order to become a target for the muskets of his comrades. Ned's compulsory return always became a matter of some notoriety; for Nancy's excursion in quest of the “graceless” was not made without frequent denunciations of wrath against him, and many melancholy apologies to the neighbors for entering upon the task of personally securing him. By this means her enterprise was sure to get wind, and a mob of the idle young men and barefooted urchins of the village, with Bob M'Cann, “a three-quarter clift” * of a fellow—half knave, half fool, was to be found, a little below the village, upon an elevation of the road, that commanded a level stretch of half a mile or so, in anxious expectation of the procession. No sooner had this arrived at the point of observation, than the little squadron would fall rearward of the principal group, for the purpose of extracting from Nancy a full and particular account of the capture.
* This is equal to the proverb—“he wants a square,” that
is, though knavish not thoroughly rational; in other words,
a combination of knave and fool. Bob, in consequence of his
accomplishments, was always a great favorite in the village.
Upon some odd occasions he was a ready and willing drudge at
everything, and as strong as a ditch. Give him only a good
fog-meal—which was merely a trifle, just what would serve
three men or so—give him, we say, a fog-meal of this kind,
about five times a day, with a liberal promise of more, and
never was there a Scotch Brownie who could get through so
much work. He knew no fatigue; frost and cold had no power
over him; wind, sleet, and hail he laughed at; rain! it
stretched his skin, he said, after a meal—and that, he
added, was a comfort. Notwithstanding all this, he was
neither more nor less than an impersonation of laziness,
craft, and gluttony. The truth is, that unless in the hope
of being gorged he would do nothing; and the only way to get
anything out of him was, never to let the gorge precede the
labor, but always, on the contrary, to follow it. Bob's
accomplishments were not only varied, but of a very elevated
order, and the means of holding him in high odor among us.
Great and wonderful, Heaven knows, did we look upon his
endowments to be. No man, wise or otherwise, could “hunt the
brock,” alias the badger, within a hundred miles of Bob; for
when he covered his mouth with his two hands, and gave forth
the very sounds which the badger is said to utter, did we
not look upon him—Bob—with as much wonder and reverence as
we would have done upon the badger himself? Phup-um-phup—
phup-um-phup—phup-um—phup-um—phup-um-phup. Who but a
first-rate genius could accomplish this feat in such a
style? Bob could crow like a cock, bark like a dog, mew like
a cat, neigh like a horse, bray like an ass, or gobble like
a turkey-cock. Unquestionably, I have never heard him
equalled as an imitator of birds and beasts. Bob's crack
feat, however, was performing the Screw-pin Dance, of which
we have only this to say, that by whatsoever means he became
acquainted with it, it is precisely the same dance which is
said to have been exhibited by some strolling Moor before
the late Queen Caroline. It is, indeed, very strange, but no
less true, that many of the oriental customs are yet
prevalent in the remote and isolated parts of Ireland. Had
the late Mr. O'Brien, author of the Essay on Irish Round
Towers, seen Bob perform the dance I speak of, he would have
hailed him as a regular worshipper of Budh, and adduced his
performance as a living confirmation of his theory. Poor
Bob! he is gone the way of all fools, and all flesh.
“Indeed, childher, it's no wonder for yez to enquire! Where did I get him, Dick?—musha, and where would I get him but in the ould place, a-hagur; with the ould set: don't yez know that a dacent place or dacent company wouldn't sarve Ned?—nobody but Shane Martin, and Jimmy Tague, and the other blackguards.” *
* The reader, here, is not to rely implicitly upon the
accuracy of Nancy's description of the persons alluded to.
It is true the men were certainly companions and intimate
acquaintances of Ned's, but not entitled to the epithet
which Nancy in her wrath bestowed upon them. Shane was a
rollicking fighting, drinking butcher, who cared not a fig!
whether he treated you to a drink or a drubbing, indeed, it
was at all times extremely difficult to say whether he was
likely to give you the drink first or the drubbing
afterwards, or vice versa. Sometimes he made the drubbing
the groundwork for the drink and quite as frequently the
drink the groundwork for the drubbing. Either one or other
you were sure to receive at his hands; but his general
practice was to give both. Shane, in fact, was a good-
humored fellow, well liked, and nobody's enemy but his own.
Jemmy Tague was a quiet man, who could fight his corner,
however, if necessary. Shane,was called Kittogue Shane, from
being left-handed. Both were butchers, and both, we believe,
alive and kicking at this day.
“And what will you do with him, Nancy?”
“Och! thin, Dick, avourneen, it's myself that's jist tired thinking of that; at any rate, consamin' to the loose foot he'll get this blessed month to come, Dick, agra!”
“Throth, Nancy,” another mischievous monkey would exclaim, “if you hadn't great patience entirely, you couldn't put up with such threatment, at all at all.”
“Why thin, God knows it's true for-you, Barney. D'ye hear that, 'graceless?' the very childhre making a laughing-stock and a may-game of you!—but wait till we get under the roof, any how.”
“Ned,” a third would say, “isn't it a burning shame for you to break the poor crathur's heart this a-way? Throth, but you ought to hould down your head, sure enough—a dacent woman! that only for her you wouldn't have a house over you, so you wouldn't.”
“And throth, and the same house is going, Tim,” Nancy would exclaim, “and when it goes, let him see thin who'll do for him; let him thry if his blackguards will stand to him, when he won't have poor foolish Nancy at his back.”
During these conversations, Ned would walk on between his two guards with a dogged-looking and condemned face; Nancy behind him, with his own cudgel, ready to administer an occasional bang whenever he attempted to slacken his pace, or throw over his shoulder a growl of dissent or justification.
On getting near home, the neighbors would occasionally pop out their heads, with a smile of good-humored satire on their faces, which Nancy was very capable of translating:
“Ay,” she would say, addressing them, “I've caught him—here he is to the fore. Indeed you may well laugh, Kitty Rafferty; not a one of myself blames you for it.—Ah, ye mane crathur,” aside to Ned, “if you had the blood of a hen in you, you wouldn't have the neighbors braking their hearts laughing at you in sich a way; and above all the people in the world, them Rafferty's, that got the decree against us at the last sessions, although I offered to pay within fifteen shillings of the differ—the grubs!”
Having seen her hopeful charge safely deposited on the hob, Nancy would throw her cloak into this corner, and her bonnet into that, with the air of a woman absorbed by the consideration of some vexatious trial; she would then sit down, and, lighting her doodeen, (* a short pipe) exclaim—
“Wurrah, wurrah! but it's me that's the heart-scalded crathur with that man's four quarters! The Lord may help me and grant me patience with him, any way!—to have my little honest, hard-earned penny spint among a pack of vagabonds, that don't care if him and me wor both down the river, so they could get their skinful of drink out of him! No matther, agra, things can't long be this a-way; but what does Ned care?—give him drink and fighting, and his blackguards about him, and that's his glory. There now's the landlord coming down upon us for the rint; and unless he takes the cows out of the byre, or the bed from anundher us, what in the wide earth is there for him?”
The current of this lecture was never interrupted by a single observation from Ned, who usually employed himself in silently playing with “Bunty;” a little black cur, without a tail, and a great favorite with Nancy; or, if he noticed anything out of its place in the house, he would arrange it with great apparent care. In the meantime, Nancy's wrath generally evaporated with the smoke of the pipe—a circumstance which Ned well knew; for after she had sucked it until it emitted a shrill, bubbling sound, like that from a reed, her brows, which wore at other times an habitual frown, would gradually relax into a more benevolent expression—the parenthetical curves on each side of her mouth, formed by the irascible pursing of her lips, would become less marked—the dog or cat, or whatever else came in her way, instead of being kicked aside, or pursued in an underfit of digressional peevishness, would be put out of her path with gentler force—so that it was, in such circumstances, a matter of little difficulty to perceive that conciliation would soon be the order of the day. Ned's conduct on these critical occasions was very prudent and commendable: he still gave Nancy her own way; never “jawed back to her;” but took shelter, as it were, under his own patience, until the storm had passed, and the sun of her good humor began to shine out again. Nancy herself, now softened by the fumes of her own pigtail, usually made the first overtures to a compromise, but, without departing from the practice and principles of higher negotiators; always in an indirect manner: as, “Biddy, avourneen,” speaking to her niece, “maybe that crathur,” pointing! to Ned, “ate nothing to-day; you had better, agra! get him the could bacon that's in the cupboard, and warm for him, upon the greeshaugh, (* hot embers) them yallow-legs (* a kind of potato) that's in the colindher; though God he knows it's ill my common (* It's ill-becoming—or it ill becomes me, to everlook his conduct)—but no matther, ahagur! There's enough said, I'm thinking—give them to him.”
On Ned seating himself to his bacon and potatoes, Nancy would light another pipe, and plant herself on the opposite hob, putting some interrogatory to him, in the way of business—always concerning a third person, and still in a tone of dry ironical indifference: as—
“Did you see Jimmy Connolly on your travels?”
“No.”
“Humph! Can you tell us if Andy Morrow sould his coult?”
“He did.”
“May be you have gumption enough to know what he got for him?”
“Fifteen guineas.”
“In troth, and it's more nor a poor body would get; but, anyway, Andy Morrow desarves to get a good price; he's a man that takes care of his own business, and minds nothing else. I wish that filly of ours was dockt; you ought to spake to Jim M'Quade about her: it's time to make her up—you know, we'll want to sell her for the rint.”
This was an assertion, by the way, which Ned knew to have everything but truth in it.
“Never heed the filly,” Ned would reply, “I'll get Charley Lawdher (* A blacksmith, and an honest man) to dock her—but it's not her I'm thinking of: did you hear the news about the tobacky?”
“No; but I hope we won't be long go.”
“Well, any how, we wor in luck to buy in them three last rowls.”
“Eh?—in luck? death-alive, how, Ned?”
“Sure there was three ships of it lost last week, on their way from the kingdom of Swuzerland, in the Aist Indians, where it grows: we can rise it thruppence a-pound now.”
“No, Ned! you're not in airnest?”
“Faith, Nancy, you may say I am; and as soon as Tom Loan comes home from Dublin, he'll tell us all about it; and for that matther, maybe it may rise sixpence a-pound; any how we'll gain a lob by it, I'm thinking.”
“May I never stir, but that's luck! Well, Ned, you may thank me for that, any way, or sorra rowl we'd have in the four corners of the house; and you wanted to persuade me against buying them; but I knew betther—for the tobacky's always sure to get a bit of a hitch at this time o' the year.”
“Bedad, you can do it, Nancy: I'll say that for you—that is, and give you your own way.”
“Eh!—can't I, Ned? And, what waa betther, I bate down Pether M'Entee three-ha'pence a-pound afther I bought them.”
“Ha! ha! ha!—by my sannies, Nancy, as to market-making, they may all throw their caps at you, you thief o' the world; you can do them nately!”
“Ha! ha! ha! Stop, Ned; don't drink that water—it's not from the garden-well. I'll jist mix a sup of this last stuff we got from the mountains, till you taste it: I think it's not worse nor the last—for Hugh Traynor's * an ould hand at making it.”
* Hugh, who, by the way, is still living, and, I am glad to
hear, in improved circumstances, was formerly in the habit
of making a drop of the right sort.
This was all Ned wanted: his point was now carried; but with respect to the rising of the tobacco, the less that is said about it the bettor for his veracity.
Having thus given the reader a slight sketch of Ned and Nancy, and of the beautiful valley in which this worthy speculator had his residence, I shall next proceed to introduce him to the village circle, which, during the long winter nights, might be found in front of Ned's kitchen-fire of blazing turf, whose light was given back in ruddy reflection from the bright pewter plates, that were ranged upon the white and well-scoured dresser in just and gradual order, from the small egg-plate to the large and capacious dish, whereon, at Christmas and Easter, the substantial round of corned beef used to rear itself so proudly over the more ignoble joints at the lower end of the table.
Seated in this clear-obscure of domestic light—which, after all, gives the heart a finer and more touching notion of enjoyment than the glitter of the theatre or the blaze of the saloon—might be found first, Andy Morrow,* the juryman of the quarter-sessions, sage and important in the consciousness of legal knowledge, and somewhat dictatorial withal in its application to such knotty points as arose out of the subjects of their nocturnal debates. Secondly, Bob Gott, who filled the foreign and military departments, and related the wonderful history of the ghost which appeared to him on the night after the battle of Bunker's-hill. To him succeeded Tom M'Roarkin, the little asthmatic anecdotarian of half the country,—remarkable for chuckling at his own stories. Then came old M'Kinny, poacher and horse-jockey; little, squeaking, thin-faced Alick M'Kinley, a facetious farmer of substance; and Shane Fadh, who handed down, traditions and fairy tales. Enthroned on one hob sat Pat Frayne, the schoolmaster with the short arm, who read and explained the newspaper for “old Square Colwell,” and was looked upon as premier to the aforesaid cabinet; Ned himself filled the opposite seat of honor.
One night, a little before the Christmas holidays in the year 18—, the personages just described were seated around Ned's fire, some with their chirping pints of ale or porter, and others with their quantum of Hugh Traynor, or mountain-dew, and all with good humor, and a strong tendency to happiness, visible in their faces. The night was dark, close, and misty; so dark, indeed, that, as Nancy said, “you could hardly see your finger before you.” Ned himself was full of fun, with a pint of porter beside him, and a pipe in his mouth, just in his glory for the night. Opposite to him was Pat Frayne, with an old newspaper on his knee, which he had just perused for the edification of his audience; beside him was, Nancy, busily employed in knitting a pair of sheep's-grey stockings for Ned; the remaining personages formed a semicircular ring about the hearth. Behind, on the kitchen-table sat Paddy Smith, the servant-man, with three or four of the gorsoons of the village about him, engaged in an under-plot of their own. On the other, a little removed from the light, sat Ned's two nieces, Biddy and Bessy Connolly, former with Atty Johnson's mouth within whisper-reach of her ear, and the latter seated close to her professed admirer, Billy Fulton, her uncle's shopman.* This group; was completely abstracted from the entertainment which was going forward in the circle round the fire.
* Each pair have been since married, and live not more
happily than I wish them. Fulton still lives in Ned's house
at the Cross-roads.
“I wondher,” said Andy Morrow, “what makes Joe M'Crea throw down that fine ould castle of his, in Aughentain?”
“I'm tould,” said M'Roarkin, “that he expects money; for they say there's a lot of it buried somewhere about the same building.”
“Jist as much as there's in my wig,” replied Shane Fadh, “and there's ne'er a pocket to it yet. Why, bless your sowl, how could there be money in it, whin the last man of the Grameses that owned it—I mane of the ould stock, afore it went into Lord Mountjoy's hands—sould it out, ran through the money, and died begging afther'? Did none of you ever hear of—
'—— —— —— —— Ould John Grame,
That swally'd the castle of Aughentain?'”
“That was long afore my time,” said the poacher; “but I know that the rabbit-burrow between that and Jack Appleden's garden will soon be run out.”
“Your time!” responded Shane Fadh, with contempt; “ay, and your father's afore you: my father doesn't remimber more nor seeing his funeral, and a merry one it was; for my grandfather, and some of them that had a respect for the family and his forbarers, if they hadn't it for himself, made up as much money among them as berried him dacently any how,—ay, and gave him a rousin' wake into the bargain, with lashins of whiskey, stout beer, and ale; for in them times—God be with them every farmer brewed his own ale and beer;—more betoken, that one pint of it was worth a keg of this wash of yours, Ned.”
“Wasn't it he that used to appear?” inquired M'Roarkin.
“Sure enough he did, Tom.”
“Lord save us,” said Nancy, “what could trouble him, I dunna?”
“Why,” continued Shane Fadh, “some said one thing, and some another; but the upshot of it was this: when the last of the Grameses sould the estate, castle, and all, it seems he didn't resave all the purchase money; so, afther he had spint what he got, he applied to the purchaser for the remainder—him that the Mountjoy family bought it from; but it seems he didn't draw up writings, or sell it according to law, so that the thief o' the world baffled him from day to day, and wouldn't give him a penny—bekase he knew, the blaggard, that the Square was then as poor as a church mouse, and hadn't money enough to thry it at law with him; but the Square was always a simple asy-going man. One day he went to this fellow, riding on an ould garran, with a shoe loose—the only baste he had in the world—and axed him, for God's sake, to give him of what he owed him, if it was ever so little; 'for,' says he, 'I huve not as much money betune me and death as will get a set of shoes for my horse.'”
“'Well,' says the nager, 'if-you're not able to keep your horse shod, I would jist recommend you to sell him, and thin his shoes won't cost you any thing,' says he.
“The ould Square went away with tears in his eyes,—for he loved the poor brute, bekase they wor the two last branches of the ould stock.”
“Why,” inquired M'Kinley, in his small squeaking voice, “was the horse related to the family?”
“I didn't say he was related to the fam——
“Get out, you shingaun!” (* Fairy-like, or connected to the fairies) returned the old man, perceiving by the laugh that now went round, the sly tendency of the question—“no, nor to your family either, for he had nothing of the ass in him—eh? will you put that in your pocket, my little skinadhre (* A thin, fleshless, stunted person.)—ha! ha! ha!”
The laugh was now turned against M'Kinley.
Shane Fadh proceeded: “The ould Square, as I was tellin yez, cried to find himself an' the poor baste so dissolute; but when he had gone a bit from the fellow, he comes back to the vagabone—'Now,' says he, 'mind my words—if you happen to live afther me, you need never expect a night's pace; for I here make a serous an' solemn vow, that as long as my property's in your possession, or in any of your seed, breed, or gineration's, I'll never give over hauntin' you an' them, till you'll rue to the back-bone your dishonesty an' chathery to me an' this poor baste, that hasn't a shoe to his foot.'
“'Well,' says the nager, 'I'll take chance of that, any way.'”
“I'm tould, Shane,” observed the poacher, “that the Square was a fine man in his time, that wouldn't put up with sich treatment from anybody.”
“Ay, but he was ould now,” Shane replied, “and too wakely to fight.—A fine man, Bill!—he was the finest man, 'cepting ould Square Storey, that ever was in this counthry. I hard my granfather often say that he was six feet four, and made in proportion—a handsome, black-a-vis'd man, with great dark whiskers. Well! he spent money like sklates, and so he died miserable—but had a merry birrel, as I said.”
“But,” inquired Nancy, “did he ever appear to the rogue that chated him?”
“Every night in the year, Nancy, exceptin' Sundays; and what was more, the horse along with him—for he used to come ridin' at midnight upon the same garran; and it was no matther what place or company the other 'ud be in, the ould Square would come reglarly, and crave him for what he owed him.”
“So it appears that horses have sowls,” observed M'Roarkin, philosophically, giving, at the same time, a cynical chuckle at the sarcasm contained in his own conceit.
“Whether they have sowls or bodies,” replied the narrator, “what I'm tellin' you is truth; every night in the year the ould chap would come for what was indue him; find as the two went along, the noise of the loose shoe upon the horse would be hard rattlin', and seen knockin' the fire out of the stones, by the neighbors and the thief that chated him, even before the Square would appeal at all at all.”
“Oh, wurrah!” exclaimed Nancy, shuddering with terror. “I wouldn't take anything and be out now on the Drumfarrar road*, and nobody with me but myself.”
*A lonely mountain-road, said to have been haunted. It is on
this road that the coffin scenes mentioned in the Party
fight and Funeral is laid.
“I think if you wor,” said M'Kinley, “the light weights and short measures would be comin' acrass your conscience.”
“No, in troth, Alick, wouldn't they; but may be if you wor, the promise you broke to Sally Mitchell might trouble you a bit: at any rate, I've a prayer, and if I only repated it wanst, I mightn't be afeard of all the divils in hell.”
“Throth, but it's worth havin', Nancy: where did you get it?” asked M'Kinley.
“Hould your wicked tongue, you thief of a heretic,” said Nancy, laughing, “when will you larn anything that's good? I got it from one that wouldn't have it if it wasn't good—Darby M'Murt, the pilgrim, since you must know.”
“Whisht!” said Frayne: “upon my word, I blieve the old Square's comin' to pay tis a visit; does any of yez hear a horse trottin' with a shoe loose?”
“I sartinly hear it,” observed Andy Morrow.
“And I,” said Ned himself.
There was now a general pause, and in the silence a horse, proceeding from the moors in the direction of the house, was distinctly heard; and nothing could be less problematical than that one of his shoes was loose.
“Boys, take care of yourselves,” said Shane Fadh, “if the Square comes, he won't be a pleasant customer—he was a terrible fellow in his day: I'll hould goold to silver that he'll have the smell of brimstone about him.”
“Nancy, where's your prayer now?” said M'Kinley, with a grin: “I think you had betther out with it, and thry if it keeps this old brimstone Square on the wrong side of the house.”
“Behave yourself, Alick; it's a shame for you to be sich a hardened crathur: upon my sannies, I blieve your afeard of neither God nor the divil—the Lord purtect and guard us from the dirty baste!”
“You mane particklarly them that uses short measures and light weights,” rejoined M'Kinley.
There was another pause, for the horseman was within a few perches of the crossroads. At this moment an unusual gust of wind, accompanied by torrents of rain, burst against the house with a violence that made its ribs creak; and the stranger's horse, the shoe still clanking, was distinctly heard to turn in from the road to Ned's door, where it stopped, and the next moment a loud knocking intimated the horseman's intention to enter. The company now looked at each other, as if uncertain what to do. Nancy herself grew pale, and, in the agitation of the moment, forgot to think of her protecting prayer. Biddy and Bessy Connolly started from the settle on which they had been sitting with their sweethearts, and sprung beside their uncle, on the hob. The stranger was still knocking with great violence, yet there was no disposition among the company to admit him, notwithstanding the severity of the night—blowing, as it really did, a perfect hurricane. At length a sheet of lightning flashed through the house, followed by an amazing loud clap of thunder; while, with a sudden push from without, the door gave way, and in stalked a personage Whose stature was at least six feet four, with dark eyes and complexion, and coal-black whiskers of an enormous size, the very image of the Squire they had been describing. He was dressed in a long black surtout, which him appear even taller than he actually was, had a pair of heavy boots upon and carried a tremendous whip, large enough to fell an ox. He was in a rage on entering; and the heavy, dark, close-knit-brows, from beneath which a pair of eyes, equally black, shot actual fire, whilst the Turk-like whiskers, which curled themselves up, as it were, in sympathy with his fury, joined to his towering height, gave him altogether, when we consider the frame of mind in which he found the company, an appalling and almost supernatural appearance.
“Confound you, for a knot of lazy scoundrels,” exclaimed the stranger, “why do you sit here so calmly, while any being craves admittance on such a night as this? Here, you lubber in the corner, with a pipe in your mouth, come and put up this horse of mine until the night settles.”
“May the blessed mother purtect us!” exclaimed Nancy, in a whisper, to Andy Morrow, “if I blieve he's a right thing!—would it be the ould Square? Did you ever set your eyes upon sich a”—
“Will you bestir yourself, you boor, and' not keep my horse and saddle out under such a torrent?” he cried, “otherwise I must only bring him into the house, and then you may say for once that you've had the devil under your roof.”
“Paddy Smith, you lazy spalpeen,” said Nancy, winking at Ned to have nothing to do with the horse, “why don't you fly and put up the gintleman's horse? And you, Atty, avourneen, jist go out with him, and hould the candle while he's doin' it: be quick now, and I'll give you glasses a-piece when you come in.”
“Let them put him up quickly; but I say, you Caliban,” added the stranger, addressing Smith, “don't be rash about him except you can bear fire and brimstone; get him, at all events, a good feed of oats. Poor Satan!” he continued, patting the horse's head, which was now within the door, “you've had a hard night of it, my poor Satan, as well as myself. That's my dark spirit—my brave chuck, that fears neither man nor devil.”
This language was by no means calculated to allay the suspicions of those who were present, particularly of Nancy and her two nieces. Ned sat in astonishment, with the pipe in his hand, which he had, in the surprise of the moment, taken from his mouth, his eyes fixed upon the stranger, and his mouth open. The latter noticed him, and stretching over the heads of the circle, tapped him on the shoulder with his whip:—
“I have a few words to say to you, sir,” he said.
“To me, your honor!” exclaimed Ned, without stirring, however.
“Yes,” replied the other, “but you seem to be fastened to your seat: come this way.”
“By all manner of manes, sir,” said Ned, starting up, and going over to the dresser, against which the stranger stood.
When the latter had got him there, he very coolly walked up, and secured Ned's comfortable seat on the hob, at the same time observing—
“You hadn't the manners to ask me to sit down; but I always make it a point of conscience to take care of myself, landlord.”
There was not a man about the fire who did not stand up, as if struck with a sudden recollection, and offer him a seat.
“No,” said he, “thank you, my good fellows, I am very well as it is: I suppose, mistress, you are the landlady,” addressing Nancy; “if you be, I'll thank you to bring me a gill of your best whiskey,—your best, mind. Let it be as strong as an evil spirit let loose, and as hot as fire; for it can't be a jot too ardent such a night as this, for a being that rides the devil.”
Nancy started up instinctively, exclaiming, “Indeed, plase your honor's reverence, I am the landlady, as you say, sir, sure enough; but, the Lawk save and guard us! won't a gallon of raw whiskey be too much for one man to drink?”
“A gallon! I only said a gill, my good hostess; bring me a gill—but I forget—I believe you have no such measure in this country; bring me a pint, then.”
Nancy now went into the bar, whither she gave Ned a wink to follow her; and truly was glad of an opportunity of escaping from the presence of the visitor. When there, she ejaculated—
“May the holy Mother keep and guard us, Ned, but I'm afeard that's no Christian crathur, at all at all! Arrah, Ned, aroon, would he be that ould Square Grame, that Shane Fadh, maybe, angered, by spakin' of him?”
“Troth,” said Ned, “myself doesn't know what he is; he bates any mortal I ever seen.”
“Well, hould agra! I have it: we'll see whether he'll drink this or not, any how.”
“Why, what's that you're doin'?” asked Ned.
“Jist,” replied Nancy, “mixin' the smallest taste in the world of holy wather with the whiskey, and if he drinks that, you know he can be nothing that's bad.” *
* The efficacy of holy water in all Roman Catholic countries,
but especially in Ireland, is supposed to be very great. It
is kept in the house, or, in certain cases, about the
person, as a safeguard against evil spirits, fairies, or
sickness. It is also used to allay storms and quench
conflagrations; and when an Irishman or Irishwoman is about
to go a journey, commence labor or enter upon any other
important undertaking, the person is sure to be sprinkled
with holy water, under the hope that the journey or
undertaking will prosper.
Nancy, however, did not perceive that the trepidation of her hand was such as to incapacitate her from making nice distinctions in the admixture. She now brought the spirits to the stranger, who no sooner took a mouthful of it, than he immediately stopped it on its passage, and fixing his eyes earnestly on herself, squirted it into the fire, and the next moment the whiskey was in a blaze that seemed likely to set the chimney in flames.
“Why, my honest hostess,” he exclaimed, “do you give this to me for whiskey? Confound me, but two-thirds of it is water; and I have no notion to pay for water when I want spirits: have the goodness to exchange this, and get me some better stuff, if you have it.”
He again put the jug to his mouth, and having taken a little, swallowed it:—“Why, I tell you, woman, you must have made some mistake; one-half of it is water.”
Now, Nancy, from the moment he refused to swallow the liquor, had been lock-jawed; the fact was, she thought that the devil himself, or old Squire Graham, had got under her roof; and she stood behind Ned, who was nearly as terrified as herself, with her hands raised, her tongue clinging to the roof of her mouth, and the perspiration falling from her pale face in large drops. But as soon as she saw him swallow a portion of that liquid, which she deemed beyond the deglutition of ghost or devil, she instantly revived—her tongue resumed its accustomed office—her courage, as well as her good-humor, returned, and she went up to him with great confidence, saying,
“Why, then, your Reverence's honor, maybe I did make a bit of a mistake, sir”—taking up the jug, and tasting its contents: “Hut! bad scran to me, but I did, beggin' your honor's pardon; how-an-diver, I'll soon rightify that, your Reverence.”
So saying, she went and brought him a pint of the stoutest the house afforded. The stranger drank a glass of it, and then ordered hot water and sugar, adding—
“My honest friends here about the fire will have no objection to help me with this; but, on second consideration, you had better get us another quart, that as the night is cold, we may have a jorum at this pleasant fire, that will do our hearts good; and this pretty girl here,” addressing Biddy, who really deserved the epithet, “will sit beside me, and give us a song.”
It was surprising what an effect the punch even in perspective, had upon the visual organs of the company; second-sight was rather its precursor than its attendant; for, with intuitive penetration, they now discovered various good qualities in his ghost-ship, that had hitherto been beyond their ken; and those very personal properties, which before struck them dumb with terror, already called forth their applause.
“What a fine man he is!” one would whisper, loud enough, however, to be heard by the object of his panegyric.
“He is, indeed, and a rale gintleman,” another would respond in the same key.
“Hut! he's none of your proud, stingy upsthart bodagahs*—none of your beggarly half-sirs*,” a third would remark: “he's the dacent thing entirely—you see he hasn't his heart in a thrifle.”
* A person vulgar, but rich, without any pretensions but
those of wealth to the character of a gentleman; a churl.
Half-sir; the same as above.
“And so sign's on him,” a fourth would add, with comic gravity, “he wasn't bred to shabbiness, as you may know by his fine behavior and his big whiskers.”
When the punch was made, and the kitchen-table placed endwise towards the fire, the stranger, finding himself very comfortable, inquired if he could be accommodated with a bed and supper, to which Nancy replied in the affirmative.
“Then, in that case,” said he, “I will be your guest for the night.”
Shane Fadh now took courage to repeat the story of old Squire Graham and his horse with the loose shoe; informing the stranger, at the same time, of the singular likeness which he bore to the subject of the story, both in face and size, and dwelling upon the remarkable coincidence in the time and manner of his approach.
“Tut, man!” said the stranger, “a far more extraordinary adventure happened to one of my father's tenants, which, if none of you have any objection, I will relate.”
There was a buzz of approbation at this; and they all thanked his honor, expressing the strongest desire to hear his story. He was just proceeding to gratify them, when another rap came to the door, and, before any of the inmates had time to open it, Father Ned Deleery and his curate made their appearance, having been on their way home from a conference held in the town of ——, eighteen miles from the scene of our present story.
It may be right here to inform the reader, that about two hundred yards from Ned's home stood a place of Roman Catholic worship, called “the Forth,” * from the resemblance it bore to the Forts or Baths, so common in Ireland. It was a small green, perfectly circular, and about twenty yards in diameter. Around it grew a row of old overspreading hawthorns, whose branches formed a canopy that almost shaded it from sun and storm. Its area was encompassed by tiers of seats, one raised above another, and covered with the flowery grass. On these the congregation used to sit—the young men chatting or ogling their sweethearts on the opposite side; the old ones in little groups, discussing the politics of the day, as retailed by Mick M'Caffry.** the politician; while, up near the altar, hemmed in by a ring of old men and women, you might perceive a voteen, repeating some new prayer or choice piece of devotion—or some other, in a similar circle, perusing, in a loud voice. Dr. Gallagher's Irish Sermons, Pastorini's History of the Christian Church, or Columbkill's Prophecy—and, perhaps, a strolling pilgrim, the centre of a third collection, singing the Dies irae, in Latin, or the Hermit of Killarney, in English.
* This very beautiful but simple place of worship does not
now exist. On its site is now erected a Roman Catholic
chapel.
** Mick was also a schoolmaster, and the most celebrated
village politician of his day. Every Sunday found him
engaged as in the text.
At the extremity of this little circle was a plain altar of wood, covered with a little thatched shed, under which the priest celebrated mass; but before the performance of this ceremony, a large multitude usually assembled opposite Ned's shop-door, at the cross-roads. This crowd consisted of such as wanted to buy tobacco, candles, soap, potash, and such other groceries as the peasantry remote from market-towns require. After mass, the public-house was filled to the door-posts, with those who wished to get a sample of Nancy's Iska-behagh* and many a time has little Father Ned himself, of a frosty day, after having performed mass with a celerity highly agreeable to his auditory, come in to Nancy, nearly frost-bitten, to get his breakfast, and a toothful of mountain dew to drive the cold out of his stomach.
Usquebaugh—literally, “water of life.”
The fact is, that Father Deleery made himself quite at home at Ned's without any reference to Nancy's saving habits; the consequence was, that her welcome to him was extremely sincere—“from the teeth out.” Father Ned saw perfectly through her assumed heartiness of manner, but acted as if the contrary was the case; Nancy understood him also, and with an intention of making up by complaisance for their niggardliness in other respects, was a perfect honeycomb. This state of cross-purposes, however, could not last long; neither did it. Father Ned never paid, and Nancy never gave credit; so, at length, they came to an open rupture; she threatened to process him for what he owed her, and he, in return, threatened to remove the congregation from “The Forth” to Ballymagowan bridge, where he intended to set up his nephew in the “public line,” to the ruin of Nancy's flourishing establishment.
“Father Ned,” said Nancy, “I'm a hardworking, honest woman, and I don't see why my substance is to be wasted by your Reverence when you won't pay for it.”
“And do you forget,” Father Ned would reply, “that it's me that brings you your custom? Don't you know that if I remove my flock to Ballymagowan, you'll soon sing to another tune? so lay that to your heart.”
“Troth, I know that whatever I get I'm obliged to pay for it; and I think every man should do the same, Father Ned. You must get a hank of yarn from me, and a bushel or two of oats from Ned, and your riglar dues along with all; but, avourneen, it's yourself that won't pay a penny when you can help it.”
“Salvation to me, but you'd skin a flint!”
“Well, if I would, I pay my debts first.”
“You do?”
“Yes, troth, do I.”
“Why then that's more than you'll be able to do long, plase the fates.”
“If all my customers wor like your Reverence, it is.”
“I'll tell you what it is, Nancy, I often threatened to take the congregation from 'The Forth,' and I'll do it—if I don't, may I never sup sorrow!”
Big with such a threat, Father Ned retired. The apprehensions of Nancy on this point, however, were more serious than she was willing to acknowledge. This dispute took place a few days before the night in question.
Father Ned was a little man, with a red face, slender legs, and flat feet; he was usually cased in a pair of ribbed minister's grey small-clothes, with leggings of the same material. His coat, which was much too short, rather resembled a jerkin, and gave him altogether an appearance very much at variance with an idea of personal gravity or reverence. Over this dress he wore in winter, a dark great-coat, with high collar, that buttoned across his face, showing only the point, of his red nose; so that, when riding or walking, his hat rested more upon the collar of his coat than upon his head.
The curate was a tall, raw-boned young man, with high jutting cheek-bones, low forehead, and close knees; to his shoulders, which were very high, hung a pair of long bony arms, whose motions seemed rather the effect of machinery than volition. His hair, which was a bad black, was cropped close, and trimmed across his eye-brows, like that of a Methodist preacher; the small-clothes he wore were of the same web which had produced Father Ned's, and his body-coat was a dark blue, with black buttons. Each wore a pair of gray woollen mittens.
“There, Pether,” said Father Ned, as he entered, “hook my bridle along with your own, as your hand is in—God save all here! Paddy Smith, ma bouchal, put these horses in the stable, till we dry ourselves a bit—Father Pether and I.”
“Musha, but you're both welcome,” said Nancy, wishing to wipe out the effects of the last tift with Father Ned, by the assistance of the stranger's punch; “will ye bounce, ye spalpeens, and let them to the fire? Father Ned, you're dhreepin' with the rain; and, Father Pether, avourneen, you're wet to the skin, too.”
“Troth, and he is, Nancy, and a little bit farther, if you knew but all. Mr. Morrow, how do you do, sir?—And—eh?—Who's this we've got in the corner? A gintleman, boys, if cloth can make one! Mr. Morrow, introduce me.”
“Indeed, Father Ned, I hav'nt the pleasure of knowing the gintleman myself.”
“Well, no matter—come up, Pether. Sir, I have the honor of introducing you to my curate and coadjutor, the Reverend Pether M'Clatchaghan, and to myself, his excellent friend, but spiritual superior, the Reverend Edward Deleery, Roman Catholic Rector of this highly respectable and extensive parish; and I have further the pleasure,” he continued, taking up Andy Morrow's Punch, “of drinking your very good health, sir.”
“And I have the honor,” returned the stranger, rising up, and diving his head among the flitches of bacon that hung in the chimney, “of introducing you and the Rev. Mr. M'—M'—M'——”
“Clatchagan, sir,” subjoined Father Ned.
“Peter M'Illclatchagan, to Mr. Longinus Polysyllabus Alexandrinus.”
“By my word, sir, but it's a good and appropriate name, sure enough,” said Father Ned, surveying his enormous length; “success to me but you're an Alexandrine from head to foot—non solum Longinus, sed Alexandrinus.”
“You're wrong, sir, in the Latin,” said Father Peter.
“Prove it, Peter—prove it.”
“It should be non tantum, sir.”
“By what rule Pether?”
“Why, sir, there's a phrase in Corderius's Colloquies that I could condimn you from, if I had the book.”
“Pether, you think you're a scholar, and, to do you justice, you're cute enough sometimes; but, Pether, you didn't travel for it, as I did—nor were you obliged to lep out of a college windy in Paris, at the time of the French Revolution, for your larning, as I was: not you, man, you ate the king's mutton comfortably at home in Maynooth, instead of travelling like your betters.”
“I appale to this gintleman,” said Father Peter turning to the stranger. “Are you a classical scholar, sir—that is, do you understand Latin?”
“What kind?” demanded the stranger dryly.
“If you have read Corderius's Colloquies, it will do,” said Father Peter.
“No, sir,” replied the other, “but I have read his commentator, Bardolphus, who wrote a treatise upon the Nasus Rubricundus of the ancients.”
“Well, sir, if you did, it's probable that you may be able to understand our dispute, so”—
“Peter, I'm afeard you've got into the wrong box; for I say he's no chicken that's read Nasus Rubricundus, I can tell you that; I had my own trouble with it: but, at any rate, will you take your punch, man alive, and don't bother us with your Latin?”
“I beg your pardon, Father Ned: I insist that. I'm right; and I'll convince you that you're wrong, if God spares me to see Corderius to-morrow.”
“Very well then, Pether, if you're to decide it to-morrow, let us have no more of it tonight.”
During this conversation between the two reverend worthies, the group around the fire were utterly astonished at the erudition displayed in this learned dispute.
“Well, to be sure, larnin's a great thing, entirely,” said M'Roarkin, aside, to Shane Fadh.
“Ah, Tom, there's nothing like it: well, any way, it's wonderful what they know!”
“Indeed it is, Shane—and in so short a time, too! Sure, it's not more nor five or six years since Father Pether there used to be digging praties on the one ridge with myself—by the same token, an excellent spadesman he was—and now he knows more nor all the Protestant parsons in the Diocy.”
“Why, how could they know any thing, when they don't belong to the thrue church?” said Shane.
“Thrue for you, Shane,” replied M'Roaran; “I disremimbered that clincher.”
This discourse ran parallel with the dispute between the two priests, but in so low a tone as not to reach the ears of the classical champions, who would have ill-brooked this eulogium upon Father Peter's agricultural talent.
“Don't bother us, Pether, with your arguing to-night,” said Father Ned, “it's enough for you to be seven days in the week at your disputations.—Sir, I drink to our better acquaintance.”
“With all my heart, sir,” replied the stranger.
“Father Ned,” said Nancy, “the gintleman was going to tell us a sthrange story, sir, and maybe your Reverence would wish to hear it, docthor?”
“Certainly, Nancy, we'll be very happy to hear any story the gintleman may plase to tell us; but, Nancy, achora, before he begins, what if you'd just fry a slice or two of that glorious flitch, hanging over his head, in the corner?—that, and about six eggs, Nancy, and you'll have the priest's blessing, gratis.”
“Why, Father Ned, it's too fresh, entirely—sure it's not a week hanging yet.
“Sorra matter, Nancy dheelish, we'll take with all that—just try your hand at a slice of it. I rode eighteen miles since I dined, and I feel a craving, Nancy, a whacuum in my stomach, that's rather troublesome.”
“To be sure, Father Ned, you must get a slice, with all the veins in my heart; but I thought maybe you wouldn't like it so fresh: but what on earth will we do for eggs? for there's not an egg under the roof with me.”
“Biddy, a hagur,” said Father Ned, “just slip out to Molshy Johnson, and tell her to send me six eggs for a rasher, by the same token that I heard two or three hens cackling in the byre, as I was going to conference this morning.”
“Well, Docthor,” said Pat Frayne, when Biddy had been gone some time, on which embassy she delayed longer than the priest's judgment, influenced by the cravings of his stomach, calculated to be necessary,—“Well, Docthor, I often pity you, for fasting so long; I'm sure, I dunna how you can stand it, at all, at all.”
“Troth, and you may well wonder, Pat; but we have that to support us, that you, or any one like you, know nothing about—inward support, Pat—inward support.”
“Only for that, Father Ned,” said Shane Fadh, “I suppose you could never get through with it.”
“Very right, Shane—very right: only for it, we never could do.—What the dickens is keeping this girl with the eggs?—why she might be at Mr. Morrow's, here, since. By the way, Mr. Morrow,” he continued, laughing, “you must come over to our church: you're a good neighbor, and a worthy fellow, and it's a thousand pities you should be sent down.”
“Why, Docthor,” said Andy, “do you really believe I'll go downwards?”
“Ah, Mr. Morrow, don't ask me that question—out of the pale, you know—out of the pale.”
“Then you think, sir, there's no chance for me, at all?” said Andy, smiling.
“Not the laste, Andy, you must go this way,” said Father Ned, striking the floor with the butt end of his whip, and winking—“to the lower raigons; and, upon my knowledge, to tell you the truth, I'm sorry for it, for you're a worthy fellow.”
“Ah, Docthor,” said Ned, “it's a great thing entirely to be born of the true church—one's always sure, then.”
“Ay, ay; you may say that, Ned,” returned the priest, “come or go what will, a man's always safe at the long run, except he dies without his clargy.—Shane, hand me the jug, if you please.—Where did you get this stuff, Nancy?—faith, it's excellent.”
“You forget, Father Ned, that that's a secret.——But here's Biddy with the eggs, and now you'll have your rasher in no time.”
When the two clergymen had discussed the rashers and eggs, and while the happy group were making themselves intimately acquainted with a fresh jug of punch, as it circulated round the table—
“Now, sir,” said Father Ned to the stranger, “we'll hear your story with the greatest satisfaction possible; but I think you might charge your tumbler before you set to it.”
When the stranger had complied with this last hint, “Well, gentlemen,” said he, “as I am rather fatigued, will you excuse me for the position I am about to occupy, which is simply to stretch myself along the hob here, with my head upon the straw hassoch? and if you have no objection to that, I will relate the story.”
To this, of course, a general assent was given. When he was stretched completely at his ease—
“Well, upon my veracity,” observed Father Peter, “the gentleman's supernaturally long.”
“Yes, Pether,” replied Father Ned, “but observe his position—Polysyllaba cuncta supina, as Psorody says.—Arrah, salvation to me but you're a dull man, afther all!—but we're interrupting the gentleman. Sir, go on, if you please, with your story.”
“Give me a few minutes,” said he, “until I recollect the particulars.”
He accordingly continued quiescent for two or three minutes more, apparently arranging the materials of his intended narration, and then commenced to gratify the eager expectations of his auditory, by emitting those nasal enunciations which are the usual accompaniments of sleep!
“Why, bad luck to the morsel of 'im but's asleep,” said Ned; “Lord pardon me for swearin' in your Reverence's presence.”
“That's certainly the language of a sleeping man,” replied Father Ned, “but there might have been a little more respect than all that snoring comes to. Your health, boys.”
The stranger had now wound up his nasal organ to a high pitch, after which he commenced again with somewhat of a lower and finer tone.
“He's beginning a new paragraph,” observed Father Peter with a smile at the joke.
“Not at all,” said Father Ned, “he's turning the tune; don't you perceive that he's snoring 'God save the King,' in the key of bass relievo?”